Putting Supermassive Black Holes on the Scale
A novel approach to estimate their mass may help reveal the relationship between supermassive black holes and the galaxies they inhabit.
How do M-dwarf Stars Measure Up?
Very low-mass M-dwarfs are a missing link in our theory of stellar interiors. Stars this small probably have fully convective interiors, but we don’t have a complete understanding of how that affects global properties like radius or temperature. It’s important to get right, if for no other reason because lots of exoplanets orbit M-dwarfs.
Where do supermassive black holes come from?
We know most galaxies host supermassive black holes at their centers, but how do they get so big? In this study, the authors investigate one of the smallest known supermassive black holes (weighing in at only 100,000 solar masses), to shed some light on what a young, accreting black hole might look like.
A Binary Butterfly
This paper looks into the heart of Minkowski’s Butterfly Nebula to answer the question: is there one star or two at work in the formation and evolution of this nebula?