Top 5 Last-Minute Astronomy-Themed Halloween Costumes
Oh crap! It’s Halloween night and you don’t have a costume, because you’ve been inside doing astronomy all week! What should you do!? Never fear: Astrobites has got your back.
Dwarf Spheroidals: Where did all the metals go?
Some galaxies get all the metals, but the dSphs surrounding the Milky Way seem to have lost
Dark Energy in the Early Universe
Dark energy is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate. The most common model for dark energy has a negligible dark energy density in the early universe. The authors use measurements of the CMB power spectrum to constrain the density of dark energy in the early universe.
Sense and Sensitivity
There is much more to a telescope than the size of its mirror. Instruments are often built and optimized with a particular science goal in mind.
It’s Not Easy Being Blue
Blue stragglers are stars that, given their mass, should have already evolved beyond the main sequence, and their existence has been a mystery to astronomers for decades. These stars must somehow have gained mass during their main sequence lifetimes; stellar collisions and mass transfer were proposed as the most likely mechanisms that could cause this to happen. A unique combination of observations, simulations, and statistical analysis was recently used to constrain their formation process.