Artist's impression of the simultaneous stellar eclipse with the planetary transit events by Kepler-1647b (Image Lynette Cook)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes the study of the planet’s characteristics circumbinary Kepler-1647b. By using the Kepler space telescope NASA, a team of scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the San Diego State University led by Veselin Kostov discovered this planet that orbits two stars. This is not the first case of this kind but it’s the biggest and its year is longer, about three Earth’s years.

Krun Macula, the borders of Sputnik Planum and their place on Pluto (Image NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

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NASA released an image of an area of ​​Pluto informally called Krun Macula that shows the variability on the dwarf planet. Obtained by putting together various photographs taken by NASA’s New Horizons space probe during its July 14, 2015 flyby, it shows the border area between the icy plains of the heart-shaped region and the nearby highlands.

Illustration of a hot Jupiter planet with its clouds (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research about the possible presence of water in the planets of the type called hot Jupiter. Those are gas giants just like Jupiter but orbit very close to their stars and consequently have very high surface temperatures. A team of scientists at NASA’s JPL led by Aishwarya Iyer tried to understand why the atmosphere of some hot Jupiters doesn’t seem to contain water.

In the background an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. In red the gas seen by ALMA (Image B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF)/G. Tremblay et al./NASA/ESA Hubble/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))

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An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the observation of an intergalactic deluge of gases that from large clouds are falling toward the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Abell 2597 cluster. By using the ALMA radio telescope a team of astronomers led by Grant Tremblay of Yale University discovered the first evidence that these huge black holes can gorge on gas through chaotic and clumpy rains of giant clouds of very cold molecular gas.

Illustration of the device in the LISA Pathfinder space probe (Image ESA/ATG medialab)

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Yesterday ESA held a press conference to announce the results of the LISA Pathfinder space probe’s tests. This demonstration mission of the technologies needed to detect gravitational waves in space has been called a success beyond expectations. The mission team scientists published an article in the journal “Physical Review Letters” which describes the test results.