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The combined power of a space telescope, a large ground-based telescope and a gravitational lens made catching a small galaxy — 1/100 the mass of the Milky Way — at the cosmic reionization epoch feasible.
We are at an interesting juncture in cosmology. Despite vast improvements in the measurement accuracy of the Hubble constant, a recent tension has arisen that is either signalling new physics or as-yet unrecognized uncertainties.
Planetary nebulae, traditionally seen as an endpoint of single stars, exhibit a variety of morphologies that cannot be explained in a single-star scenario. It is becoming clearer that perhaps even the majority of planetary nebulae result from binary interactions.
Cassini’s camera observed Titan from orbit at different angles (0–166°) and found that the planet looks brighter towards the night than at midday. This effect, linked to the scattering properties of Titanian haze, can also be present in exoplanets.
The detection of a metal-polluted G star in a binary system with an invisible X-ray source offset from the centre of a supernova remnant leads to the suggestion that this was the progenitor pair behind a core-collapse supernova in RCW 86.
The authors put together measurements of ions and neutral atoms from Cassini and the two Voyagers and find that the heliosphere responds quickly (with a lag of 2–3 years) to the solar cycle and that it is bubble-shaped and not tail-shaped, as usually schematized.
Liquid methane lakes dot Titan’s polar regions. Numerical models reveal that the creation of buoyant bubbles through nitrogen exsolution near the bed of the Ligeia Mare lake can explain transient brightenings observed by Cassini on the lake’s surface.
The detection of gravitational waves is the culmination of many decades of persistent theoretical, observational and engineering work. While heralded as surprising, that the first detected wavescame from binary black holes was indeed theoretically expected.
The stacking of nearly three-quarters of a million spectra has unearthed a previously unknown component of the Galactic halo: a widely distributed, neutral, excited hydrogen layer that could harbour a sizeable proportion of the Milky Way’s baryons.
A faint galaxy has been detected in the very early Universe thanks to deep observations and a massive cluster gravitationally magnifying its emission. One out of only five such galaxies known, this detection constrains how the Universe was reionized.
Can the recent Discovery mission selections be used as tea leaves to understand the future directions of NASA? In an age of many programmes being used to advance administrative and programmatic goals, Discovery appears to be driven almost entirely by science and by NASA's goal of cheaper missions.
First the neutrinos arrived, then the burst of light: messengers of a cataclysmic event in the galaxy next door. Alak Ray recounts IAUS 331, a conference that celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the supernova of a lifetime, SN1987A, and explored the critical role of asymmetry in the explosions, surroundings and initial conditions.
It's not often that an astronomical object gets its own dedicated observatory, but as the planet Beta Pictoris b moves in front of its host star, its every move will be watched by bRing, eager to discover more about the planet's Hill sphere, explains Matthew Kenworthy.
