Telescopes

New confirmations that phosphorus was brought to Earth by comets

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An article to be published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports a study tracing the journey of phosphorus from star formation to comets. A team of researchers led by Víctor Rivilla of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics used the ALMA radio telescope and data collected by ESA’s Rosetta space probe’s ROSINA instrument on comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko to understand where phosphorus is formed and how comets may have brought it to Earth, where it’s needed by life forms.

A map of plasma motions in the Perseus and Coma galaxy clusters

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophyiscs” reports the mapping of the distribution and motion of hot gas within the Perseus and Coma galaxy clusters. A team of researchers led by Jeremy Sanders of the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial physics in Garching, Germany, used in particular ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope to study those two large clusters and detect the gas that, at very high temperatures and in the form of a plasma, shines at X-rays. This mapping offers new information on the formation and evolution of galaxy clusters.

New details of the center of the Milky Way observed by the SOFIA flying telescope

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An article submitted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports the initial results of an investigation about the center of the Milky Way conducted using the SOFIA flying telescope to capture infrared details never seen before and therefore useful for mapping an area 600 light years across. A team of researchers integrated those observations with data previously collected using NASA’s Spitzer space telescope and ESA’s Herschel space observatory obtaining a map of the center of the galaxy useful for example to understand where gas is concentrated which can lead to the new stars’ formation, how some of the most massive stars in the Milky Way formed in a relatively small region or where materials are likely to be devoured by the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy.

The exoplanet TOI 700 d is the first discovered by the TESS space telescope in its system's habitable zone

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Three articles submitted for publication in “The Astrophysical Journal” report various aspects of a study of the TOI 700 system and the discovery of three exoplanets thanks to the observations made by NASA’s TESS space telescope. Several researchers collaborated to confirm the existence of the three exoplanets and to study their characteristics, in particular TOI 700 d, the outermost and the only one of the three to orbit in the habitable zone of its system. Its existence was also confirmed using the Spitizer space telescope making it the first rocky exoplanet discovered by TESS in the habitable zone.

The galaxy AGC 203001 is the most visible thanks to the huge red ring

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” reports the discovery of a giant neutral hydrogen ring surrounding a “quenched galaxy” cataloged as AGC 203001. A team of astronomers from the National Center for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) in Pune, India, used the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to observe that ring, much larger than the galaxy itself with a diameter of about 380,000 light years, four tiems the Milky Way’s. The collaboration of French astronomers allowed a further study with the Canada-France-Hawaii-Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii, USA, which found no signs of stars associated with the ring, an oddity considering that such a structure seems perfect as a nursery for new stars.