Reviews & Analysis

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  • Supermassive binary black holes are thought to lie at the centres of merging galaxies. The blazar OJ 287 is the poster child of such systems, showing strong and periodic variability across the electromagnetic spectrum. A new study questions the physical origin of this variability.

    • Zulema Abraham
    News & Views
  • With the ever-growing list of exoplanets fuelling hope for finding life beyond the Solar System, the recent Breakthrough Discuss meeting redirected attention back to our own neighbourhood.

    • John C. Forbes
    Meeting Report
  • CubeSats, a standardized subgroup of small satellites, are a cheap and flexible solution to perform astronomical observations from space that is just starting to be exploited. This Perspective presents an overview of their advantages and of the current and planned projects.

    • Evgenya L. Shkolnik
    Perspective
  • Observations of two sequences of blue stragglers in a young, sparse star cluster in the Large Magellanic Cloud re-opens the debate about the dominant formation mechanism of these anomalous stars.

    • Alison Sills
    News & Views
  • Recently, large integral-field spectroscopic studies of galaxies have greatly increased our knowledge of their structure and evolution. A new analysis of such data reveals a relationship between the age and the intrinsic — three-dimensional — shape of galaxies.

    • Anne-Marie Weijmans
    News & Views
  • Hydrogen sulfide gas is detected above Uranus’s main cloud deck, confirming the prevalence of H2S ice particles as the main cloud component and a strongly unbalanced nitrogen/sulfur ratio in the planet's deep atmosphere.

    • Imke de Pater
    News & Views
  • The discovery of a prominent spectral absorption line in X-rays in an ultra-luminous X-ray source is perhaps indicative of the presence of very intense magnetic fields and hints to a magnetar as its power source.

    • Matthew G. Baring
    News & Views
  • Gravitational lensing is becoming increasingly important to the study of distant galaxies and dark matter. Two groups have recently detected transient events emanating from far-away lensed galaxies, apparently due to extreme magnification of individual stars.

    • Rosanne Di Stefano
    News & Views
  • Using evolving observing strategies and technologies we are catching supernovae closer and closer to the ‘b’ of the ‘bang’, thus unveiling new types of explosion mechanism that have not been studied in depth before.

    • J. J. Eldridge
    News & Views
  • Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) remains controversial despite its wide acceptance as necessary to regulate massive galaxy growth. Consequently, we held a workshop in October 2017, at Leiden’s Lorentz Center, to distinguish between the reality and myths of feedback.

    • Bernd Husemann
    • Chris M. Harrison
    Meeting Report
  • A peak in the infrared phase curve occurring after eclipse suggests a westward shift in the dayside hotspot of hot giant exoplanet CoRoT-2b, calling into question our understanding of atmospheric dynamics on hot gas giants.

    • Joanna K. Barstow
    News & Views
  • A new geochemical study shows that short-lived warm and wet episodes during a globally cold early Mars could have formed the clay deposits detected on the Martian surface. This model can reconcile climate models with mineralogical and geomorphological evidence.

    • John C. Bridges
    News & Views
  • One of the astrophysical sources that gives rise to the mysterious transients known as fast radio bursts is embedded in a highly magnetized environment, such as the vicinity of an accreting massive black hole or the birth nebula of a highly magnetized neutron star.

    • Brian D. Metzger
    News & Views