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Solar cycle 25 has begun In the past one and a half years, the sun has been rather dull: hardly a sunspot covered its surface, hardly a solar flare hurled radiation and particles into space. As observational data now show, for the last nine months solar activity has been slowly picking up again. Already in December 2019, our star passed its activity minimum, an event which occurs approximately every eleven years. This confirms predictions made by the Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel, an international panel of experts organized by NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), in March last year. The panel, whose membersRead More →

Scientist searches for stellar phosphorus to find potentially habitable exoplanets A Southwest Research Institute scientist has identified stellar phosphorus as a probable marker in narrowing the search for life in the cosmos. She has developed techniques to identify stars likely to host exoplanets, based on the composition of stars known to have planets, and proposes that upcoming studies target stellar phosphorus to find systems with the greatest probability for hosting life as we know it. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Unraveling a spiral stream of dusty embers from a massive binary stellar forge With almost two decades of mid-infrared (IR) imaging from the largest observatories around the world including the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers was able to capture the spiral motion of newly formed dust streaming from the massive and evolved binary star system Wolf-Rayet (WR) 112. Massive binary star systems, as well as supernova explosions, are regarded as sources of dust in the Universe from its early history, but the process of dust production and the amount of the ejected dust are still open questions. WR 112 is a binary system composedRead More →

Astronomers discover a 2-km asteroid orbiting closer to the sun than Venus Astronomers have painstakingly built models of the asteroid population, and those models predict that there will be ~1 km-sized asteroids that orbit closer to the sun than Venus does. The problem is, nobody’s been able to find one—until now. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Five new giant radio galaxies discovered With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers have detected five new giant radio galaxies (GRGs). The new GRGs have sizes ranging from 2.3 to 2.6 million light years, and have been identified at redshift between 0.28 and 0.43. The finding is reported in a paper published September 8 on the arXiv pre-print server. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

How scientists around the world track the solar cycle Every morning, astronomer Steve Padilla takes a short walk from his home to the base of a tower that soars 150 feet above the ground. Tucked in the San Gabriel Mountains, about an hour’s drive north from Los Angeles, the Mount Wilson Observatory has long been a home for space science—it’s Padilla’s home too, one of the perks to his work as Mount Wilson’s sun observer. Mount Wilson has several solar system sentinels; the telescope perched at the top of this tower keeps constant watch on the sun. Observers study the sun closely, so we canRead More →

From star to solar system: How protoplanetary rings form in primordial gas clouds Four-hundred fifty light-years from Earth, a young star is glowing at the center of a system of concentric rings made from gas and dust, and it is producing planets, one for each gap in the ring. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Elements of surprise: Neutron stars contribute little, but something’s making gold, research finds Neutron star collisions do not create the quantity of chemical elements previously assumed, a new analysis of galaxy evolution finds. The research also reveals that current models can’t explain the amount of gold in the cosmos—creating an astronomical mystery. The work has produced a new-look Periodic Table showing the stellar origins of naturally occurring elements from carbon to uranium. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Venus: Could it really harbour life? New study springs a surprise Earth’s sister planet, Venus, has not been regarded as a high priority in the search for life. Its surface temperature of around 450°C is thought to be hostile to even the hardiest of micro-organisms, and its thick, sulfurous and acidic atmosphere has kept the surface almost completely free from visiting spacecraft. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Radio relic discovered in a nearby galaxy cluster Using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, an international team of astronomers has detected a radio relic in a nearby, low-mass, merging galaxy cluster designated A2384. The finding is reported in a research paper published September 6 on the arXiv pre-print repository. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Proposal for observatory to detect gravitational waves Researchers could detect more mergers of black holes and neutron stars with plans for a new flagship gravitational wave observatory in Europe moving a step closer. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Scientists propose possible mechanisms to explain coronal mini-jets in activated tornado-like prominence Solar jets are a common phenomenon in the solar atmosphere. They mainly appear as transient collimated plasma ejections. Some studies have shown that jets may play an important role in heating the corona and initiating solar winds.   phys.org Go to SourceRead More →