The Hubble Space Telescope has generated the most comprehensive survey yet of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest galactic neighbor to the Milky Way. The new mosaic of about 2.5 billion pixels yields new clues to the galaxy’s history. 91探花astronomers presented the findings Jan. 16 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
91探花 scientists recently discovered that the giant ‘conveyor belt’ currents that push star-forged material out of our galaxy and pull it back in can also transport carbon atoms. That means that a good deal of the carbon here on Earth, including the carbon in our bodies, likely left the galaxy at some point!
Since 2018 the聽Zwicky Transient Facility, an international astronomical collaboration based at the Palomar Observatory in California, has scanned the entire sky every two to three nights. As part of this mission, the ZTF鈥檚 Bright Transient Survey has been counting and cataloguing supernovae 鈥� flashes of light in the sky that are the telltale signs of stars dying in spectacular explosions. On Dec. 4, ZTF researchers 鈥� including astronomers at the 91探花 鈥� announced that that they have identified more than 10,000 of these stellar events, the largest number ever identified by an astronomical survey.
NASA鈥檚 upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will look for 鈥渇ossils鈥� of galaxy formation by conducting high-resolution imaging studies. Through a grant from NASA, astronomers are designing a set of possible observations called RINGS 鈥� the Roman Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey 鈥� that would collect these images, and the team is producing publicly available tools that the astronomy community can use once Roman launches and starts collecting data.
A new study has found galaxies with more neighbors tend to be larger than their counterparts that have a similar shape and mass, but reside in less dense environments. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the Astrophysical Journal, the team, which used a machine-learning algorithm to analyze millions of galaxies, reports that galaxies found in denser regions of the universe are as much as 25% larger than isolated galaxies. The findings resolve a long-standing debate among astrophysicists over the relationship between a galaxy鈥檚 size and its environment, but also raise new questions about how galaxies form and evolve over billions of years.
Baptiste Journaux, a 91探花faculty member in Earth and space sciences, and four graduate students will travel to Arkansas on Monday to view the total solar eclipse. They will use a special telescope to capture images of solar features that can be viewed most clearly during an eclipse.聽
In 2021, Colin Orion Chandler started Active Asteroids Citizen Science, a partnership between NASA, Zooniverse, astronomers and thousands of citizen scientist volunteers. The initiative is searching for so-called “active asteroids,” which have comet-like tails and could hold clues to the formation of our solar system, among other cosmic mysteries. Chandler, now a 91探花 researcher, and his team recently announced they have discovered 15 active asteroids, and are continuing the search for more of these unusual and rare objects.
Astronomers with the International Astronomical Union are trying to understand how the brightness and transmissions of the BlueWalker3 satellite will interfere with Earth-based observations of the universe 鈥� and what can be done to minimize these effects as more of these satellites are launched.
An asteroid discovery algorithm 鈥� designed to uncover near-Earth asteroids for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory鈥檚 upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky 鈥� has identified its first 鈥減otentially hazardous鈥� asteroid, a term for space rocks in Earth鈥檚 vicinity that scientists like to keep an eye on. The roughly 600-foot-long asteroid, designated 2022 SF289, was discovered during a test drive of the algorithm with the ATLAS survey in Hawaii. Finding 2022 SF289, which poses no risk to Earth for the foreseeable future, confirms that the next-generation algorithm, known as HelioLinc3D, can identify near-Earth asteroids with fewer and more dispersed observations than required by today鈥檚 methods. That is important because, though scientists know of more than 2,000 near-Earth asteroids, they estimate that another 3,000 await discovery!
Something is amiss in the Butterfly Nebula. When a team led by astronomers at the 91探花 compared two exposures of this planetary nebula that had been taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and 2020, they saw dramatic changes in the material within its “wings.” As the team will report on Jan. 12 at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, powerful winds are apparently driving complex alterations of material within the Butterfly Nebula, behavior not seen in planetary nebulae to date. The researchers want to understand how such activity is possible from what should be a 鈥渟puttering, largely moribund star with no remaining fuel.鈥�
On Jan. 11 at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, a team led by scientists at the 91探花 and the Center for Computational Astrophysics reported something unexpected about the distinct populations of stars that make up the Triangulum galaxy: In this satellite galaxy, a close companion of the much larger Andromeda galaxy, old and new stars occur in separate parts of the galaxy’s structure, something not seen in galaxies like our own and so far not reporter for other satellite galaxies.
91探花 astronomers were on the lookout for 鈥渟tars behaving strangely鈥� when an automated alert from pointed them to Gaia17bpp, a star that had gradually brightened over a 2 1/2-year period. But follow-up analyses indicated that Gaia17bpp wasn鈥檛 changing. Instead, the star is likely part of a rare type of binary system. Its apparent brightening was the end of a years-long eclipse by an unusual, “dusty” stellar companion.
In a study published Dec. 8 in Nature Astronomy, an international research team, led by Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, analyzed 10 highly detailed exposures taken by the JWST of the Southern Ring Nebula. Their calculations show the central star that ejected the expanding nebula gas was originally three times the mass of the sun, and that unseen companions shaped the nebula’s intricate features.
A novel algorithm developed by 91探花 researchers to discover asteroids in the solar system has proved its mettle. The first candidate asteroids identified by the algorithm 鈥� known as Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or THOR 鈥� have been confirmed by the International Astronomical Union鈥檚 Minor Planet Center, according to a May 31 announcement by the B612 Foundation.
The flashing of a nearby star drew the attention of a team of astronomers, who discovered that it is part of a rare and mysterious system. As they report in a paper published May 4 in Nature, the stellar oddity appears to be a 鈥渂lack widow binary鈥� 鈥� a type of system consisting of a rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar, that is circling and slowly consuming a smaller companion star, as its arachnid namesake does to its mate.
Scientists once thought that post-starburst galaxies scattered all of their gas and dust 鈥� the fuel required for creating new stars 鈥� in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, a team led by 91探花 postdoctoral researcher Adam Smercina reports that these galaxies don鈥檛 scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, after their supposed end, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly concentrated, turbulent gas. But contrary to expectation, they鈥檙e not using it to form stars.
Space urgently needs special legal protection similar to that given to land, sea and atmosphere to protect its fragile environment, argues a team of scientists. The scientific, economic and cultural benefits of space should be considered against the damaging environmental impacts posed by an influx of space debris 鈥� roughly 60 miles above Earth鈥檚 surface 鈥斅爁ueled by the rapid growth of so-called satellite mega-constellations. In a paper published April 22 in Nature Astronomy, the authors assert that space is an important environment to preserve on behalf of professional astronomers, amateur stargazers and Indigenous peoples.
The 91探花 and Carnegie Mellon University have announced an expansive, multi-year collaboration to create new software platforms to analyze large astronomical datasets generated by the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, which will be carried out by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in northern Chile. The open-source platforms are part of the new LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing 鈥� known as LINCC 鈥� and will fundamentally change how scientists use modern computational methods to make sense of big data.
Astronomers have long suspected that superflares, extreme radiation bursts from stars, can cause lasting damage to the atmospheres 鈥� and thus habitability 鈥� of exoplanets. A new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society reports that they pose only a limited danger to planetary systems.
Prof. Emily Levesque鈥檚 course 鈥淕reat Heroes and Discoveries of Astronomy鈥� 鈥� part of The Great Courses, a popular online learning platform 鈥� takes viewers on a tour of the biggest advancements in one of humanity鈥檚 oldest sciences and the people behind them.
A 91探花-led team has revisited and comprehensively reinterpreted the radio telescope observations underlying a widely reported 2019 claim that phosphine gas was present in the atmosphere of Venus. In a paper accepted to the Astrophysical Journal, they report that sulfur dioxide, a common gas in the atmosphere of Venus, is likely what was detected instead of phosphine.
A study accepted by the Planetary Science Journal shows that the planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system share similar densities. That could mean they all contain roughly the same ratio of materials thought to be common to rocky planets, such as iron, oxygen, magnesium and silicon — though they appear to differ notably from Earth.
Astronomers have catalogued 126 years of changes to a binary star system called HS Hydrae. Analyzing observations from astro-photographic plates in the late 1800s to TESS observations in 2019, they show that the two stars in HS Hydrae began to eclipse each other starting around a century ago, peaking in the 1960s. The degree of eclipsing then plummeted over the course of just a half century, and will cease around February 2021.
The tiny Stingray Nebula unexpectedly appeared in the 1980s is by far the youngest planetary nebula in our sky. But a team of astronomers recently analyzed a more recent image of the nebula, taken in 2016 by Hubble, and found that it has faded significantly and changed shape over the course of just 20 years. If dimming continues at current rates, in 20 or 30 years the Stingray Nebula will be barely perceptible.
When the universe was in its infancy, it contained no stars at all. And an international team of scientists is closer than ever to detecting, measuring and studying a signal from this era that has been traveling through the cosmos ever since that starless era ended some 13 billion years ago.
An international team of astronomers has used mysterious fast radio bursts to solve a decades-old mystery of 鈥渕issing matter,鈥� material long predicted to exist in the universe but never detected 鈥� until now. The researchers have now found all of the missing 鈥渘ormal鈥� matter in the vast space between stars and galaxies. The team, which includes scientists based in Australia, the United States and Chile, announced its findings in a paper published May 27 in the journal Nature.
Late last year, news broke that the star Betelgeuse was fading significantly, ultimately dropping to around 40% of its usual brightness. The activity fueled popular speculation that the red supergiant would soon explode as a massive supernova. But astronomers have more benign theories to explain the star鈥檚 dimming behavior. And scientists at the 91探花 and Lowell Observatory believe they have support for one of them: Betelgeuse isn鈥檛 dimming because it鈥檚 about to explode 鈥� it鈥檚 just dusty. In…
Joyce Yen 鈥� director of the 91探花鈥檚 ADVANCE Center for Institutional Change, an NSF-funded body to promote female STEM faculty on campus 鈥� recently worked with the Heising-Simons Foundation to dismantle bias and promote diversity in a prominent grant that the Foundation awards to postdoctoral researchers in planetary science. In this Q&A, Yen shares the many, sometimes counterintuitive ways bias can work against goals toward greater diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM fields.
An image captured earlier this year by the Hubble Space Telescope may look like a ghostly apparition, but it is not. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.
The National Science Foundation awarded the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and nine collaborating organizations, including the 91探花, $2.8 million for a two-year 鈥渃onceptualization phase鈥� of the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.
An international team of astronomers has analyzed the signal from a fast radio burst 鈥� an enigmatic blast of cosmic radio waves lasting less than a millisecond 鈥� to characterize the diffuse gas in the halo of a massive galaxy.
New research from astronomers at the 91探花uses the intriguing TRAPPIST-1 planetary system as a kind of laboratory to model not the planets themselves, but how the coming James Webb Space Telescope might detect and study their atmospheres, on the path toward looking for life beyond Earth.
The subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus probably has higher than previously known concentrations of carbon dioxide and hydrogen and a more Earthlike pH level, possibly providing conditions favorable to life, according to new research from planetary scientists at the UW.
Emily Levesque, 91探花assistant professor of astronomy, is gathering material for a new book to be called “The Last Stargazers: True Tales of the Colorful and Vanishing World of Observational Astronomy.鈥�
The Zwicky Transient Facility, based at the Palomar Observatory, has identified over a thousand new objects and phenomena in the night sky, including more than 1,100 new supernovae and 50 near-Earth asteroids. 91探花 scientists are part of the ZTF team and led the development of the collaboration’s alert system, which informs science teams of possible new objects or changes to known objects in the sky.
A UW-based group is launching a national student challenge to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo moon landing.
On Jan. 10 at the 2019 American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, an international team of astronomers announced that they have identified the type of companion star that made its partner in a binary system, a carbon-oxygen white dwarf star, explode. Through repeated observations of SN 2015cp, a supernova 545 million light years away, the team detected hydrogen-rich debris that the companion star had shed prior to the explosion.
As part of a 91探花-led project, NASA鈥檚 Hubble Space Telescope has produced a stunningly detailed portrait of the Triangulum Galaxy, displaying a full spiral face aglow with the light of nearly 25 million individually resolved stars.
Not all stars are like the sun, so not all planetary systems can be studied with the same expectations. New research from a 91探花-led team of astronomers gives updated climate models for the seven planets around the star TRAPPIST-1.
Aspects of an otherwise Earthlike planet鈥檚 tilt and orbital dynamics can severely affect its potential habitability 鈥� even triggering abrupt 鈥渟nowball states鈥� where oceans freeze and surface life is impossible, according to new research from 91探花astronomers.