Finding T Dwarfs with WISE
With the addition of these 87 new T dwarfs, WISE has now tripled the number of known T dwarfs with spectral type later than T5.
The Milky Way is cut back down to size
Everything in our galaxy is moving– you, the earth underneath you, the sun, other stars– everything. However, it turns out that figuring out how fast some of these things are moving is surprisingly difficult, and can have Galactic-sized implications!
The galaxy’s red giant bones
“Galactic archaeology” is the term that has come to refer to using the motions and chemical compositions of stars of different ages to learn about the history of the Milky Way. It seems to me that “galactic paleontology” might be a bit more accurate. I hope to see galactic archaeology v. galactic paleontology fought out in the comments!
Searching for Giant Planets Around Baby Stars
How long does planetary migration take? Crockett et al. look for the answer by searching for hot Jupiters around extremely young stars.
Do Stellar Models Agree?
How well do stellar models match? Would astronomers using different stellar models and identical data determine consistent fits?
Two stars merged, and we got to watch
V1309 Sco first caught astronomers attention in 2008, when it displayed an outburst, suddenly getting a hundred times brighter. Due its location near the Galactic center, V1309 Sco has been monitored by the OGLE, which is looking for microlensing events, since 2001. The authors of this paper were able to look back into this archive of data and see what V1309 Sco was doing before it erupted.