Volume 7 Issue 8, August 2023

With the retirement of Ariane 5, Europe lost its only heavy-lift rocket — one that carried most of ESA’s fleet of large astronomy missions. The long-term future of independent access to space for Europe is not straightforward and can complicate the European space exploration roadmap.

The different roles of outflows in the removal of angular momentum from young stellar systems are becoming clearer with high-angular-resolution spectral-line studies.

A quasar has taken part in the gravitational lensing of a background galaxy into an Einstein ring, which enables a remarkable measurement of the host galaxy lensing mass.

A statistical study of the variable X-ray flux from individual knots within jets supports a model that identifies a secondary population of electrons as the source of the synchrotron emission in active galactic nuclei jets.

New detector technologies and upcoming facilities will revolutionize sub-millimetre astronomy over the next decade. Experts in instrument science, data processing, observations, and state-of-the-art simulations met at the Lorentz Center in Leiden to discuss the most pressing science questions in the field.

As pairs of black holes inspiral and merge, they create gravitational waves. These waves hold information about the environment in which the black holes are embedded: using future space-based gravitational-wave detectors, it will be possible to distinguish what kind of environment that is.

The quantization of spacetime could be revealed indirectly through its imprint on the propagation of particles. An analysis combining data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope shows preliminary statistical evidence of such a quantum-spacetime effect.

An analysis of 1,055 planets around main sequence stars identifies three subsamples of star–planet synchronization: subsynchronized, dominant for periods shorter than 6.2 days; supersynchronized, for periods longer than 13.5 days; and a transitional regime in between. Synchronized systems are a minority, contrary to eclipsing binaries.

Multi-unit spectroscopic explorer observations of TW Hya trace the [O I] emission from the inner 1 au of the disk, arising from what is ostensibly a magnetothermal wind. This result questions the strength of the role of photoevaporation in disk dispersal and has implications for planet formation.

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite data of the massive star HD 192575 reveal pulsation frequencies that allow the inference of its convective core mass and interior rotation profile, thus providing a calibration point for interior chemical and angular momentum transport mechanisms.

J191213.72-441045.1, the second white dwarf pulsar system found, is a binary that comprises a white dwarf in a 4.03 h orbit with an M dwarf. The system exhibits pulsed emission with a period of 5.30 min and was detected at wavelengths from radio to X-rays.

A Bayesian approach to comparing the effects of accretion disks, dark matter or clouds of ultra-light bosons on gravitational waveforms from a black hole binary system concludes that detectors such as LISA can distinguish between these environments.

The authors compute the gradient of the Milky Way’s heavy elements as though they were viewing our Galaxy from the outside. This will allow astronomers to compare Galactic measurements with those for other galaxies to understand how typical the Milky Way is.

A rare case of a quasar acting as a gravitational lens allows a precise determination of the mass of the quasar’s host galaxy and offers a new path to studying the connections between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.

Strong X-ray emission from a population of radio jets shows variability that supports a model of synchrotron emission by a secondary population of electrons boosted to teraelectronvolt energies within a small volume of a jet.

This paper presents evidence for dynamical interactions in the very dense regions in the core of galaxies causing two compact objects, such as neutron stars and black holes, to merge, leading to a gamma-ray burst.

Early-time multi-frequency radio observations of the exceptionally bright GRB 221009A show the detailed evolution of a reverse shock formed within the jet that was launched as the result of a stellar explosion.

Following a recalibration of the direction and energy of neutrinos detected by IceCube, a reanalysis using a quantum-gravity model finds stronger evidence for subluminal neutrinos from gamma-ray bursts, which are slowed down by quantum spacetime properties.

Gary Ferland has been developing the photoionization code Cloudy for 45 years. The model has steadily been expanding in its coverage of parameter space, and focuses on the microphysics of irradiated environments.

XRISM will pick up where Hitomi left off, observing the energetic gas associated with galaxies.

The China Exo-Ecosystem Space Experiment — hosted on the Tiangong Space Station — aims to explore the ability of microbes to survive in space.