Astronomers have found evidence of water in the remains of a planetary system around a white dwarf. This indicates water-rich asteroids can bring water to terrestrial planets, important for the habitability of planets.
The authors of this work report the discovery of the most distant, spectroscopically-confirmed galaxy found to date, which presently lies about 30 billion light years from Earth. The galaxy is being observed as it was at a time just 700 million years after the Big Bang, which is a mere 5% of the universe’s current age of 13.8 billion years.
Giant clouds of molecules in space provide the gain material for astrophysical masers, emitting microwave radiation by stimulated emission. These bright sources can be used to determine extragalactic distances and black hole masses. This paper reports on a search for new extragalactic water masers with the Very Long Baseline Array, and reports on the discovery of four sources in 37 objects searched.
The authors seek to understand how two galaxies are interacting with each other.
NASA is looking for a new mission for the damaged Kepler space telescope. Here are some ideas.
Sgr A* – the supermassive black hole sitting in the center of the Milky Way – is often referred to as a ‘starved’ black hole, meaning that it swallows very little of the nearby cosmic gas and dust. The authors of this paper observed Sgr A* with the Chandra X-ray telescope for 3 mega seconds, throughout which only 1% of the gas available to Sgr A* actually accreted onto the black hole. It swallows cold gas, while rejecting hot gas – ejecting the matter back into space.