2I/Borisov: Interstellar comet with a familiar look A new comet discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov is an outcast from another star system, yet its properties are surprisingly familiar, a new study led by Jagiellonian University researchers shows. The team’s findings are being published in Nature Astronomy on 14 October 2019. phys.org Go to Source

Astronomers use giant galaxy cluster as X-ray magnifying lens Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have used a massive cluster of galaxies as an X-ray magnifying glass to peer back in time, to nearly 9.4 billion years ago. In the process, they spotted a tiny dwarf galaxy in its very first, high-energy stages of star formation. […]

Astrophysicist suggests light might be a problem for life on a planet orbiting a black hole Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has taken what he describes as a tongue-in-cheek look at the issues that might stand in the way of life existing on a planet orbiting a black hole. He […]

Hubble snaps spiral’s profile The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope sees galaxies of all shapes, sizes, luminosities and orientations in the cosmos. Sometimes, the telescope gazes at a galaxy oriented sideways—as shown here. The spiral galaxy featured in this Hubble image is called NGC 3717, and it is located about 60 million light-years away in the […]

Open cluster ASCC 123 investigated in detail Using the Galileo National Telescope, astronomers have conducted a high-resolution spectroscopic study of the open cluster ASCC 123 as part of the Stellar Population Astrophysics (SPA) project. Results of the new research, presented in a paper published October 4 on arXiv.org, provide important information about fundamental parameters of […]

The nature of obscured active galactic nuclei Most galaxies host a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at their nucleus, one whose mass exceeds a million solar-masses. When material actively accretes onto the SMBH, associated processes can produce an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a hot torus and dramatic bipolar jets of rapidly moving charged particles. The […]

Black holes stunt growth of dwarf galaxies Astronomers at the University of California, Riverside, have discovered that powerful winds driven by supermassive black holes in the centers of dwarf galaxies have a significant impact on the evolution of these galaxies by suppressing star formation. phys.org Go to Source

Astrophysicists use artificial intelligence to determine exoplanets sizes Using a machine learning technique, a team of Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço researchers constrained the radius of an exoplanet with known mass. phys.org Go to Source

Violent flaring revealed at the heart of a black hole system An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Southampton, have used state-of-the-art cameras to create a high frame-rate movie of a growing black hole system at a level of detail never seen before. In the process they uncovered new clues to understanding […]

The Milky Way kidnapped several tiny galaxies from its neighbor Just like the moon orbits the Earth, and the Earth orbits the sun, galaxies orbit each other according to the predictions of cosmology. phys.org Go to Source

Astronomers show how supergiant stars repeatedly cool and heat up An international team of professional and amateur astronomers, which includes Alex Lobel, astronomer at the Royal Observatory of Belgium, has determined in detail how the temperature of four yellow hypergiants increases from 4000 degrees to 8000 degrees and back again in a few decades. They […]

Milky Way raids intergalactic ‘bank accounts,’ Hubble study finds Our Milky Way is a frugal galaxy. Supernovas and violent stellar winds blow gas out of the galactic disk, but that gas falls back onto the galaxy to form new generations of stars. In an ambitious effort to conduct a full accounting of this recycling process, […]

For newborn planets, solar systems are naturally baby-proof Numerical simulations by a group of astronomers, led by Mario Flock from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, have shown that young planetary systems are naturally “baby-proof”: Physical mechanisms combine to keep young planets in the inner regions from taking a fatal plunge into the star. Similar […]

Astronomers investigate a black hole candidate during outburst Using MeeKAT telescope, astronomers have studied a black hole candidate X-ray binary system known as H1743−322 during an outburst that took place last year. Results of the study, presented in a paper published October 1 on arXiv.org, could help astronomers to untangle the mysteries of black holes […]

Milky Way’s center will be revealed by NASA’s Webb Telescope The center of our galaxy is a crowded place: A black hole weighing 4 million times as much as our sun is surrounded by millions of stars whipping around it at breakneck speeds. This extreme environment is bathed in intense ultraviolet light and X-ray radiation. […]