Allan Sandage: A Biographical Memoir
Today’s astrobite reviews some of the discoveries of the famous astronomer Allan Sandage, who passed away late last year.
Identifying Gamma-Ray Burst Progenitors
Using a clever technique, the authors identify a sub-population of rotating Wolf-Rayet stars.
An update on the atmosphere of super-Earth GJ1214b
The latest episode in the saga of GJ1214b appeared on the arXiv Wednesday.
Alien Artifacts in our own Solar System?
Researchers at Penn State aim to determine the probability that artifacts from allien civilizations are present in our Solar System.
Happy Thanksgiving, Early Universe, now can you please pass the metals?
Thank a massive star today for synthesizing your delicious turkey (or tofurkey) meal.
Of cosmic telescopes and high-z galaxies
Lensing occurs when the mass of a foreground object distorts and magnifies the light from a background galaxy or quasar, sometimes even creating multiple images. It probably isn’t a stretch to say that the neatest thing about lensing is that you can typically see two to four images of the same galaxy. But something else that’s cool is that these distant background objects are magnified, making it possible to study them in detail when otherwise they might not be seen at all: in this way, gravitational lenses act as natural cosmic telescopes.