Dancing with the (Six) Stars, or, a 200 year story of the Castor system
Astronomers study the orbits of a sextuplet system, an absurdly complex arrangement of six stars in orbit around one another, in order to measure their masses once and for all.
Fly-bye, Baby: a review of the impact of stellar flybys on protoplanetary disks
Protoplanetary disks don’t exist in isolation; when young stars pass each other by, their gravitational encounter can disrupt, or maybe even kickstart, planet formation.
Flipping the table: inferring planet formation from atmospheric composition
Planet formation is dynamic, and different planet formation models can produce dramatically different planetary atmospheres. Today’s bite discusses a new framework developed to tackle this problem, and shines some light on the formation of the exoplanet HR 8799e.
Herald of the Change: A microlensing Jupiter-analogue spotted in K2 data portends Roman’s yield of new planets
Astronomers have just found Jupiter’s twin in a distant solar system. Their discovery technique may surprise you, and might just be the most important method for discovering Earth-like exoplanets in the next decade…
Peek-a-boo! Forming Moons Revealed Around a Baby Planet
How do moons form in the universe? Astronomers recently gathered direct evidence for the formation of moons around exoplanets!