A Planet Found by Pulsations
Thus far, most of the exoplanets we’ve discovered orbit around cool stars rather than hot ones. Recently, an unusual technique has been found to discover a planet in the habitable zone of a very hot star.
Thus far, most of the exoplanets we’ve discovered orbit around cool stars rather than hot ones. Recently, an unusual technique has been found to discover a planet in the habitable zone of a very hot star.
Supermassive black holes — which often weigh in at millions to billions of solar masses — can accrete matter as they lurk at the centers of galaxies. Is there a maximum mass that these monsters can attain?
How will the tiny spacecraft of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative fare against dust, as they speed through interstellar space on their way to Proxima Centauri? Astrobites reports on the potentially catastrophic consequences of the interstellar medium for the mission.
Creating the codes that are used to numerically model astrophysical systems takes a lot of work — and a lot of testing! Here’s a brief look at the some of the entrancing test outputs from the new DISCO code.
Were Mars’s two moons once main-belt asteroids, now captured into orbit? Or were they created when a large body slammed into Mars?
Where do the heavy elements — the chemical elements beyond iron — in our universe come from? The mergers of neutron stars could be responsible.
When rocky exoplanets form, they are initially believed to have molten surfaces. Astrobites reports on how this ocean of magma could affect a planet’s atmosphere.
Could a white-dwarf duo have formed from a trio of main-sequence stars? Scientists explore the birth of an unusual binary system.
What’s causing the mysterious light-curve dips of the so-called “alien megastructure” star? Here are a few of the latest possible explanations.
M dwarfs like V374 Peg or even the nearby Proxima Centauri are likely to have major stellar storms. What impact could this activity have on planets in the stars’ habitable zones?
Astrobites reports on recent simulations studying how the extremely powerful, active centers of some galaxies might have formed.
Hubble’s STIS instrument has made several new observations of debris disks around three nearby solar-analog stars.