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Astrophysical disks are rotationally-supported disks of gas and dust. They are found in a range of astrophysical objects, from small protoplanetary systems and accreting X-ray binaries, to massive disks surrounding actively accreting supermassive black holes in the centre of galaxies. They emit electromagnetic radiation at a range of wavelengths depending on their specific interactions with their parent bodies and surroundings.
Relativistic jets observed from transient neutron stars throughout the Universe produce bright flares for minutes after each X-ray burst, helping to determine the role individual system properties have on the speed and revealing the dominant launching mechanism.
Spectrally and spatially resolved ALMA observations of water vapour in the inner regions of the famous planet-forming disk around HL Tauri pave the way towards an observational characterization of planet formation at the water snowline.
The hydroxyl radical OH has been detected in a planet-forming disk exposed to ultraviolet radiation and in a rovibrationally excited state. These JWST observations, when coupled with quantum calculations, reveal the ongoing photodissociation of water and its reformation in the gas phase.
A black hole at the centre of a quasar at a redshift of z = 4 is accreting the mass of the Sun every day. The quasar’s extreme luminosity is equivalent to 50,000 times that of the Milky Way. Its broad-line region should be resolvable observationally and will provide an important test for broad-line region size–luminosity relationships.
Deep, high-resolution polarization observations of HL Tau at 870 µm show gaps that have polarization angles with a notable azimuthal component and a higher polarization fraction than the rings.
Charles Gammie and colleagues wrote the HARM code to tackle the extreme physics close to a spinning black hole. Twenty years later, it is performing a similar task in three dimensions in 1/10,000th of the time.
Early JWST results on high-redshift galaxies have attracted a lot of press and much debate, but other areas of astronomy and astrophysics are also uncovering new understanding about the Universe with JWST, albeit with less of a fanfare.
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.
