Sorry I missed your birthday by one million years: Accounting for the pre-main sequence delay
Keeping track of millions of stars is tricky. Today’s authors take on the challenge of accounting for each one’s time of birth.
Judging a red supergiant book by its cover
What does the surface of a red supergiant star look like? It’s no polarising statement to say that it has more in common with a pot of bubbling soup than you might think!
When Galaxies Get Clumpy: JWST Maps the Birth and Death of Star-Forming Clumps
You think stars form quietly? Think again. In the early universe, galaxies were packed with star-forming clumps. Some disrupted quickly, while others survived. Today’s paper reveals which lived and which died young.
Nathan Sanders is Rewiring Democracy
For today’s bite, we chatted with Nathan Sanders (one of the original founders of Astrobites) about his journey into and beyond astronomy and the process of writing and publishing a book!
Zapping PAHs? Yee-haw!
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are small molecules consisting of rings of carbons, ubiquitous in the interstellar medium. However, PAHs do not seem to be present in protoplanetary disks around the youngest stars. Today’s paper tries to understand why that is.
Twinkle, twinkle, little quasar! Can you tell me how far away you are?
When we don’t have spectra, we can estimate the distance to a quasar by calculating its photometric redshift. Today’s authors present a new way to use the ‘flickering’ of quasars to improve these distance estimates.