The Closest Encounter of a Stellar Kind
70,000 years ago, a binary star passed through the outskirts of the Oort Cloud–was it the closest known stellar encounter?
Are There Age Spreads in Intermediate Age Clusters?
Can stellar clusters be host to multiple star formation events? The authors of today’s paper take a closer look…
Characterizing Cepheid Light Curves
Distance is a tricky thing to measure in astronomy. We can’t use tape measures or rulers, and even more sophisticated methods like laser ranging are only good for the very nearest of neighbors, like the moon. That’s where distance indicators like Cepheids come in.
ASASSN-13co: A Type-Defying Supernova
There are arguably a lot of things defy categorization, but it’s not everyday that we find something that suggests we do away with our categories altogether. The authors of today’s paper believe that the recently-discovered Type II supernova ASASSN-13co — read that as “assassin”, please — might just be one of the latter.