Features

Studying a Guest Star’s Annual Appearances

With T Coronae Borealis expected to rise to naked-eye visibility any day now, recurrent novae are in the news. To learn more about these events, check out today’s article about a recurrent nova in a neighboring galaxy.

Jupiter

HIP 41378f — a cold, puffy exoplanet with four known siblings — becomes one of just a handful of planets with an estimate of its rotation period.

Messier 82

Astrobites reports on the results of a cosmic-ray investigation of the starburst galaxy Messier 82 using the VERITAS gamma-ray telescopes.

What at first appeared to be an unremarkable low-mass galaxy cluster has been revealed to host a rare pair of parenthesis-shaped radio sources.

hot jupie

What is pulling exoplanet XO-3b out of alignment with its host star? A recent study explores the system and reveals an emerging trend that provides a boundary for planet formation mechanisms.

Messier 87 jet
Features

A New Way to Measure Black Hole Spin

Sensitive polarized-light observations of the relativistic jets of supermassive black holes may provide an entirely new way to measure the spin of a black hole.

cloud-9 neutral hydrogen contour map

Astrobites reports on an investigation of Cloud-9, a cloud of hydrogen gas that may be a galaxy containing dark matter but no stars.

DEM L 190 supernova remnant

Mark your calendars for a few tens of millions of years in the future: a core-collapse supernova at just 228 light-years away is sure to be spectacular.

Titan sunglint

From its vantage point in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft captured the brilliant gleam of sunlight reflecting off of Titan’s oily hydrocarbon seas. New research explores what sunglint can tell us about the interaction between Titan’s seas and atmosphere.