In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning ...
Astronomy
Jan 8, 2021
6
546
Ninety years after Edwin Hubble discovered the systematic motions of galaxies and George Lemaitre explained them as cosmic expansion from a point using Einstein's equations of relativity, observational cosmology today is ...
Astronomy
Jan 4, 2021
4
194
Planets are formed from the disk of gas and dust around a star, but the mechanisms for doing so are imperfectly understood. Gas is the key driver in the dynamical evolution of planets, for example, because it is the dominant ...
Astronomy
Dec 21, 2020
0
174
The carbon atom can be easily ionized, more easily than hydrogen atoms for example. In star forming regions, where massive young stars emit ultraviolet light capable of ionizing atoms, all the neutral carbon nearby becomes ...
Astronomy
Dec 7, 2020
0
70
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, and its planet, Proxima Cen b ("Proxima b"), lies in its habitable zone (the distance range within which surface water can be liquid), making the planet a prime target for ...
Astronomy
Nov 30, 2020
0
194
An international team of scientists led by the Center for Astrophysics / Harvard & Smithsonian, has identified a problem with the growing interest in extractable resources on the moon: there aren't enough of them to go around. ...
Space Exploration
Nov 23, 2020
2
297
Sparked by an image uploaded to Twitter, new research indicates that the light produced by black hole accretion may be bright enough to reflect off of dust, illuminating the host galaxy, and creating light and dark rays similar ...
Astronomy
Nov 19, 2020
0
1019
A galactic bar is the approximately linear structure of stars and gas that stretches across the inner regions of some galaxies. The bar stretches from one inner spiral arm, across the nuclear region, to an arm on the other ...
Astronomy
Nov 6, 2020
1
2447
TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the Sun's nearest neighbors, stars bright enough to allow for follow-up characterizations of their planets' ...
Astronomy
Oct 26, 2020
2
695
Once a black hole forms, its intense gravitational field produces a surface beyond which even light cannot escape, and it appears black to outsiders. All the details of the complex mix of matter and energy in its past are ...
Astronomy
Oct 15, 2020
166
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