Volume 6 Issue 1, January 2022

The combination of hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the ocean of Enceladus represents chemical energy that could support life — but should we expect to see any energy ‘left on the table’ if anything alive is actually there to use it?

A simulated hybrid emission model to mimic the morphology of the jet launching region of M87 reproduces the observed shape of the innermost jet and favours a high spin of the central black hole.

A new model for the origin of the Solar System proposes planet building blocks formed fast from material that was transported outwards to cooler regions. It claims to be consistent with the properties of ancient meteorites.

The limits on late accretion and its associated water delivery to potential habitable planets are derived by examining the dynamical stability of the resonance-bound TRAPPIST-1 system.

Unlocking the internal secrets of a β Cephei star with a state-of-the-art polarimeter may open up a greater understanding of whether a massive star eventually explodes in a supernova or collapses directly to a black hole.

A multi-disciplinary team recently came together online to discuss the application of sonification in astronomy, focusing on the effective use of sound for scientific discovery and for improving accessibility to astronomy research and education.

Combining polarimetry with space-based photometry and archival spectroscopy has given us an unprecedented understanding of the characteristics and interior structure of the bright β Cephei-type variable star β Crucis.

This Perspective discusses massive black holes in dwarf galaxies and presents new insights on the demographics of nearby dwarf galaxies to help constrain the black hole occupation/active fraction as a function of mass and dwarf galaxy type.

This Review examines gas dynamics in dwarf galaxies, such as rotation curves and mass models. Star-forming dwarfs extend the dynamical laws of spiral galaxies and show small scatter around them, implying a tight coupling between baryons and dark matter.

This Review summarizes what is known of the stellar and chemical properties of nearby (<20 Mpc) star-forming dwarf galaxies. These objects resemble the earliest formed galaxies and may thus represent a window on the distant, early Universe.

As the Perseverance rover landed on the Martian surface, the sensors on NASA’s InSight Mars lander picked up no seismic or acoustic waves. This non-detection provides information on the crust and atmosphere of Mars.

The Zhurong rover has explored its landing site in Utopia Planitia, Mars, and is travelling south towards the highland–lowland boundary, focusing initially on the composition and physical properties of the rocks along the way.

An evolutionary model of the solar protoplanetary disk that includes the decrease of its viscosity with time and the accretion of gas from the interstellar medium shows that planetesimals formed simultaneously in two locations: at the water snowline (~5 au) and at the silicate sublimation line (~1 au), explaining the observed isotopic dichotomy of iron meteorites.

The resonant chain of the TRAPPIST-1 planets is dynamically fragile, as small perturbations during its lifetime would have disrupted it. N-body simulations show that the system could not have interacted with more than 0.05 Earth masses of material after its formation. Thus, any water in the planets must come from the planets’ original accretion.

A population of free-floating planets in Upper Scorpius that is larger than that predicted by core-collapse models suggests that the ejection of planets due to dynamical interactions early in the lifetime of a forming planetary system is more common than prevoiusly thought.

From its optical light curve, the white dwarf in the binary system TW Pictoris appears to be switching between two different intensities of accretion on timescales of hours. This behaviour is reminiscent of that seen in transitional millisecond pulsars, where the switching occurs several times a minute.

General relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations with general relativistic radiative transfer reproduce remarkably well the broadband spectrum and morphology of the innermost jet of M87, allowing some first rough constraints on the spin of M87*.

Previously unresolved radio features of nearby Centaurus A reveal transition regions for both the feeding of this active galaxy and the feedback mechanism for recycling energy back into the surrounding medium.

The authors report time-series interferometric observations of a microlensing event from the ground. The lens images rotate during the series, giving the direction of motion of the lens and a very accurate Einstein ring radius. The lens is a 1.1-solar mass object at a distance of 5–6 kpc.

Wet chemistry experiments performed in situ by the Curiosity rover in the sand of Bagnold Dunes detected an array of organic molecules including aromatic benzoic acid, nitrogen-bearing organics and other unidentified compounds.

Magnetospheres of exoplanets are vast, tenuous and hard to detect. Deep blue-shifted absorption lines observed in the extended region around HAT-P-11 b may provide evidence for a magnetosphere and magnetotail.

This Article reports the detection of oscillations in the massive star β Crucis using polarized light. Such oscillatory modes provide information about stellar structure; in this case the stellar mass, inclination of the rotation axis and size of the convective core.

The Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S), which will focus on solar eruptions and their origins, is scheduled for launch in late 2022, explain Chief Scientist Weiqun Gan and assistants Li Feng and Yang Su.