Telescopes

Artistic representation of the newborn black hole which has a distorted shape with a cusp along with the emissions of gravitational waves

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An article published in the journal “Communications Physics” reports a study on black hole mergers that shows the relationship between the gravitational signal emitted by that event and the shape of the black hole produced by it. A team of researchers led by Juan Calderón Bustillo – Marie Curie Fellow of the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, created computer simulations of these mergers establishing that the shape of the black hole produced, distorted during the moments while it’s settling and similar to a chestnut, influence the characteristics of gravitational waves. The “chirps”, as the multiple frequency peaks produced in the gravitational emissions, could be detected if the line of sight were parallel to the merger’s orbital plane.

Some of the galaxies observed in the GAMA project

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An article published in the journal “Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society” proposes a new way of studying star formation in galaxies. A team of researchers led by Sabine Bellstedt of the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) developed a technique to analyze the metallicity, which is the abundance of elements heavier than helium, of galaxies. Those elements are produced by stars so their amount increases over time and the more massive ones produce more as well as emit more light. By combining the analysis of metallicity with that of the brightness of galaxies it offers information on the masses of stars. The resulting model offers information on the history of star formation, and the application to a sample of 7,000 galaxies indicates that most stars formed in the first 4 billion years of the universe’s life.

Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole surrounded by galaxies within a cosmic web (Image ESO/L. Calçada)

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An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics Letters” reports a study on a group of six galaxies surrounding a supermassive black hole which date back to an early epoch when the universe was less than a billion years old. A team of researchers led by Marco Mignoli of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), Bologna, used ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) to observe that structure which turned out to be complex as it includes filaments of matter that extend for a distance over 300 times the size of the Milky Way. The gas that concentrates in that structure forms what have been likened to the threads of a spider’s web, and that gas could be responsible for the development of a supermassive black hole in such a remote time.

Simulations and observations of M87*

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” reports a study on the data collected during the years of the area around the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, the one in the image presented in April 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope project (EHT) project. A team of researchers led by Maciek Wielgus of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) also analyzed data not published but was part of the observations carried out between 2009 and 2013 with fewer radio telescopes. Those observations were very useful to show the changes in that area, with the shadow of the black hole M87* wobbling and with a variation in its orientation.

Artist's concept of Pi Earth (Image courtesy NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, Christine Daniloff, MIT)

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An article published in “The Astronomical Journal” reports a study on the exoplanet K2-315b, nicknamed Pi Earth because its year lasts 3.14 Earth days, an approximation of the value of pi. A team of researchers from the SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project, a network of ground-based telescopes, used them to confirm the planet’s existence by verifying data collected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Pi Earth is very close to its star so the temperature on its surface is very high even if the star is very small and relatively cold. Any life forms should be analogous to terrestrial extremophiles. It may be lifeless but it is an interesting candidate for studying its atmosphere.