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Planets and their systems have long held the spotlight, but researchers, space agencies and even the private sector and the public have turned their attention to small bodies.
A ring of maser emission seemingly expanding at 0.05 c is actually tracing the propagation of heat through the circumstellar medium around a high-mass protostar rather than subluminal motion. The heatwave is a manifestation of an accretion burst.
A joint analysis of spectroastrometry and reverberation mapping observations independently measures the distance to the active galaxy nucleus 3C 273 and the value of H0. Future observations of about 30 such sources will measure H0 to less than 3% precision.
Bright star \(\nu\) Indi shows elevated levels of alpha-process elements, suggesting great age, and is kinematically heated, probably from the merger of a dwarf galaxy with the Milky Way. Chaplin et al. make a case for \(\nu\) Indi being an accurate indicator of the timing for the Gaia–Enceladus merger.
The early Solar System might have been similar to the ringed protoplanetary disks observed by ALMA. One of the gaps, at Jupiter’s position, could be the cause of the observed dichotomy between carbonaceous and non-carbonaceous material.
A refined analysis of infrared observations of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from the VIRTIS instrument on board the Rosetta spacecraft has revealed the presence of aliphatic organic molecules on the comet nucleus.
Spectroscopic simulations of exoplanetary atmospheres show that our best chance to detect molecular oxygen lies in the 6.4-μm band of collision-induced absorptions. The first detections could be possible with the James Webb Space Telescope.
Fragile et al. study the physics of accretion onto a neutron star from a thin accretion disk when interacting with an X-ray burst. A number of processes occur in the inner disk, including a reflexive retreat of the inner edge of the disk from the star, on the timescale of the burst.
This Perspective highlights the science opportunities and the vast discovery space of simultaneous observations from the LISA and Athena observatories, which would be missed if they were operated in different epochs .