Astronomy / Astrophysics

Some of the galaxies observed in the 3D-DASH survey

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An article accepted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the release of the results of the 3D-DASH survey, which aims to map star-forming regions to understand the formation of the most ancient galaxies, which from the Earth’s point of view are the most distant. A team of researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to capture near-infrared images in the area known as the COSMOS (Cosmic Evolution Survey) field, a previous survey conducted with Hubble.

Artist's concept of a super-Earth orbiting close to a red dwarf (Image courtesy Gabriel Pérez Díaz, SMM (IAC))

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An article accepted for publication in the journal “Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan” reports the discovery of the exoplanet Ross 508 b, probably a super-Earth at the edge of ​​its star system’s habitable zone. A team of researchers led by Hiroki Harakawa used the IRD (InfraRed Doppler) instrument mounted on the Subaru Telescope to examine the star Ross 508, a red dwarf that has a mass that is only 18% of the Sun’s. The radial velocity method allowed to identify what from the collected data looks like a rocky planet with a mass that is about 4 times the Earth’s. This discovery confirms the value of infrared spectroscopic examinations of red dwarfs.

The area around Sagittarius A* (Image courtesy EHT Collaboration)

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In various press conferences, representatives of the institutions collaborating in the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project announced that they obtained the first image of the area around Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The central shadow, which constitutes the black hole, is surrounded by a sort of ring formed by gas and dust that glow because they were heated by Sagittarius A*. It took the combination of 8 radio telescopes to obtain proof of the existence of this supermassive black hole, taken for granted by the vast majority of scientists but still denied by some.

The pulsar PSR J0523-7125 in the square seen by MeerKAT (Image courtesy Yuanming Wang)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the discovery of a pulsar cataloged as PSR J0523-7125, the brightest pulsar discovered outside the Milky Way. A team of researchers led by Tara Murphy of the Australian University of Sydney used a new technique based on the analysis of the polarization of the light emitted by the pulsar to identify it among the observations conducted with the ASKAP radio telescope. The polarization was crucial in the identification because it made it possible to understand that the light came from a pulsar and not from an object of another type.

The galaxies NGC 1385, NGC 1566, NGC 3344, and NGC 6503

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the results of a study conducted on 108 galaxies containing nuclear star clusters in search of intermediate-mass black holes. A team of researchers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to look for the traces of this type of black hole that has so far been very elusive. In 29 of these galaxies, they found emissions they believe came from this type of black hole and traces of the destruction of thousands of stars. This suggests that intermediate-mass black holes grow by devouring stars.