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PolarLight is the first dedicated soft X-ray polarimeter in space since the 1970s and is attempting to reopen this long-awaited window in astronomy, explain Principal Investigator Hua Feng and Ronaldo Bellazzini.
The Spitzer Space Telescope returned infrared images and spectra with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution, enabling the characterization of the dust-enshrouded star formation of and within galaxies. This has yielded indicators of total star formation, used as unbiased tracers of the stellar production across cosmic times.
We are living in exceptional circumstances. It is not business as usual. There is no script, and where we end up after the global pandemic is partly up to us.
Exoplanetary and Solar System science lost a major figure with the sudden passing of Professor Adam Showman on 16 March 2020 at the age of 51. He was recognized as the world’s leading authority in the field of atmospheric dynamics of exoplanets.
The Spitzer Space Telescope recently ceased operations, powering down its remaining detector after more than a decade and a half of revealing the infrared Universe. Its legacy will be continued by far more expensive missions that will have big boots to fill.
In 2010, the Spitzer Space Telescope detected evidence of a complex form of carbon that had never been seen in extraterrestrial environments. Jan Cami recounts the discovery of buckminsterfullerene in space.
A recent national survey on behalf of the French Society of Astronomy and Astrophysics highlights the elitism and gender discrimination faced by women — particularly women educated in universities rather than grandes écoles — when applying for permanent positions in astronomy in France.
