Astronomy

Using the world's most advanced radio telescopes, astronomers have discovered a spinning dead star so rare, strange and unique that they have dubbed it a "cosmic unicorn." The unique properties of this object, CHIME J1634+44, challenge our current understanding of spinning dead stars and their environments.

CHIME J1634+44, also known as ILT J163430+445010 (J1634+44), is part of a class of objects called Long Period Radio Transients (LPTs). LPTs are a newly found and mysterious type of celestial body that emits bursts of radio waves that repeat on timescales of minutes to hours. That's significantly longer than the emission of standard pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron star stellar remains that sweep beams of radiation across the cosmos as they spin.

But as strange as all LPTs are, CHIME J1634+44 still stands out. Not only is it the brightest LPT ever seen, but it is also the most polarized. Additionally, its pulses of radiation seem highly choreographed. And what really stands out about CHIME J1634+44 is the fact that it is the only LPT astronomers have ever seen whose spin is speeding up.

Hey everyone!

It's a great time to get out and go stargazing what with the meteor shower, Ophiuchus, Cygnus, and Aquila rising, Hercules near the zenith, and Scorpio prominant in the southern sky for those of you in the northern hemisphere. Tonight, I'm planning on taking some time to familiarize myself with the globs in Hercules, some targets in Scorpio, Epsilon Lyrae, and maybe some targets in Cygnus.

The Subaru Telescope has made an exciting discovery: a small body beyond Pluto, with implications for the formation, evolution, and current structure of the outer solar system.

The object officially designated 2023 KQ~14,~ was found as part of the survey project FOSSIL (Formation of the Outer Solar System: An Icy Legacy), which takes advantage of the Subaru Telescope's wide field of view. The object was discovered through observations taken in March, May, and August 2023 using the Subaru Telescope.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/33958431

A team of astronomers led by the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has discovered a rare object far beyond Neptune, from a class known as trans-Neptunian objects, that is moving in rhythm with the giant planet. This object, called 2020 VN40, is the first confirmed body that orbits the sun once for every ten orbits Neptune completes.

This discovery helps scientists understand how objects in the outer solar system behave and how they got there. It supports the idea that many distant objects are temporarily "caught" in Neptune's gravity as they drift through space.

Our circumstances here on the wondrous, life-supporting Earth can give us a false understanding of what the Universe is really like. But our blue-skied, temperate planet is the extreme exception when it comes to other worlds. There's nothing remotely like Earth in our Solar System, and exoplanet studies reinforce that idea. While some exoplanets have hints of habitability, most exoplanets are extremely inhospitable.

Ultra-Short Period (USP) planets are one example of these hostile worlds. USPs follow orbits shorter than one Earth day long, meaning they're very close to their stars. They're so close that their surfaces are molten, and they've likely lost whatever atmospheres they had to their star's intense output. These planets are also imperiled: they can be torn apart by their stars' massive gravitational force, or even spiral into their stars and be totally destroyed.

Astronomers have detected a giant exoplanet—between three and ten times the size of Jupiter—hiding in the swirling disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star.

Earlier observations of this star, called MP Mus, suggested that it was all alone without any planets in orbit around it, surrounded by a featureless cloud of gas and dust.

However, a second look at MP Mus, using a combination of results from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, suggest that the star is not alone after all.

The international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, detected a large gas giant in the star's protoplanetary disk: the pancake-like cloud of gases, dust and ice where the process of planet formation begins. This is the first time that Gaia has detected an exoplanet within a protoplanetary disk. The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggest that similar methods could be useful in the hunt for young planets around other stars.