The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the sun's nearest neighbor stars. TESS has so far discovered 172 confirmed exoplanets and compiled a ...
Astronomy
Jan 3, 2022
1
1020
Debris disks around main-sequence stars are tenuous belts of dust thought to be produced when asteroids or other planetesimals collide and fragment. They are common: more than about a quarter of all main-sequence stars have ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2021
1
83
Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have observed a new type of binary star that has long been theorized to exist. The discovery finally confirms how a rare type of star in the universe forms ...
Astronomy
Dec 1, 2021
278
11505
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are bright pulses of emission at radio wavelengths (seen mostly at wavelengths of tens of centimeters) whose physical mechanism(s) are mysterious. The bursts last between hundredths of a millisecond ...
Astronomy
Nov 22, 2021
0
651
Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) have very low luminosities, comparatively few stars, and little star-formation activity as compared with normal galaxies of similar sizes. Commonly found in galaxy clusters, UDGs come in a wide ...
Astronomy
Nov 5, 2021
7
625
The 2020 Decadal Survey for Astronomy and Astrophysics has recommended a new series of three Great Observatories—or space-based telescopes—as a top national priority for the future of space astrophysics.
Astronomy
Nov 5, 2021
0
20
Planets and their stars form from the same reservoir of nebular material and their chemical compositions should therefore be correlated but the observed compositions of planets do not match completely those of their central ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2021
1
330
Signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way galaxy may have been detected for the first time. This intriguing result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, opens up a new window to search for exoplanets ...
Astronomy
Oct 25, 2021
2
42457
The planets of the solar system all orbit the Sun more-or-less in a plane. Compared to the Earth's orbit, which defines the plane at zero degrees, the orbit with the largest angle is Mercury's whose inclination is 7 degrees ...
Astronomy
Oct 18, 2021
0
5394
In October 2019, a high-energy neutrino slammed into Antarctica. The neutrino, which was remarkably hard to detect, piqued astronomers' interest: what could generate such a powerful particle?
Astronomy
Oct 13, 2021
3
1401
