Astrobites

Giant Impacts Go Boom (Machine Learning Edition)

Astrobites reports on how machine learning can help researchers simulate the phase of planet formation in which planetary embryos interact, collide, and combine to form the planets we know and love.

Artist's depiction of two black holes nearing a merger.

Astrobites reports on how researchers are preparing for future detections of merging supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes.

combined Hubble and JWST image of GRB 221009A

Two powerful telescopes examined the brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed by humans, hundreds of days after the burst was first detected. What did they see?

With their extremely low surface brightness, ultra-diffuse galaxies are very difficult to detect, but a recent study has spotted one by searching for its globular clusters.

Messier 87 jet

The massive nearby elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts one of the most-studied supermassive black holes in the universe. What have researchers recently learned about this black hole’s spin, jets, and flares?

quasar pair J0749+2255

Astrobites reports on JWST observations of a mysterious binary quasar system from cosmic noon.

Illustration of a planet around a red dwarf star

The troubles continue for planets around the smallest and coolest stars: new research suggests that it’s even harder than previously suspected for these planets to hold on to their atmospheres.

multi-wavelength image of the Bullet Cluster

Astrobites reports on the famous Bullet Cluster — what JWST observations reveal about its complex merger history and the constraints these observations place on self-interacting dark matter.

Messier 81

Recent observations of a well-studied but confounding galaxy provide new insights into the structure of low-luminosity active galactic nuclei.