Clues to the Reionization Mystery of the Universe
How did the universe go from being neutral and opaque to transparent and reionized at z ~ 6? Today’s paper gives us some observational evidence for what might be responsible.
The ‘Ultimate’ X-ray Sky Survey: Finding Active Galaxies in Superclusters
The XXL Survey is here as the rightful successor to the XMM-Newton survey that gave us a unique and extravagant look into the high-energy universe. Here, we look at some of the observations that the XXL has to offer!
The APOGEE Treasure Trove
The three-year APOGEE survey was designed to target red giant stars in the Milky Way using near-infrared light, and today’s paper marks the final data release: half a million spectra of 146,000 stars. This treasure trove of data will be put to good use for years to come.
The Magnetic Personalities Of Dead Stars
The galaxy is littered with white dwarfs, the burnt out remnants of stars that have run out of hydrogen fuel in their cores, but were too small to explode as supernovae. But far from being lifeless orbs, around a tenth of white dwarfs have powerful magnetic fields, a million times stronger than that of the Sun. How did these magnetic white dwarfs become such strong magnets? And just how many are there. The authors of this paper set out to answer the second of these questions, in the hope that it would shed light on the first.
Evryscope, Greek for “wide-seeing”
Everyscope: Opening a new window into time-resolved astronomy.
Compact Galaxies in the Nearby Universe
Small and massive compact galaxies are some of the hardest galaxies to find, but they could potentially reveal how galaxies evolved in the early universe.