Orbital science, astronomy, remote sensing, and what lies beyond the atmosphere.
A study in Nature reports a rare stellar explosion, SN 2021yfj, that gave astronomers an unusually direct view into the inner layers of a massive dying star. The event appears to have come from a star stripped down to an oxygen, silicon and sulfur-rich region, exposing material that usually stays buried until the final collapse.…
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A study in Monthly Notices has confirmed a rare pair of giant planets orbiting the star TOI-791 and both worlds appear so swollen and light that astronomers classify them among the strangest known exoplanets. The work reports two long-period, Jupiter-sized planets with extremely low densities, a combination that places the system in the unusual family…
Researchers analyzing NASA’s Webb observations have watched the giant exoplanet HD 80606 b heat up as its stretched orbit carried it close to a Sun-like star. The planet is about four times the mass of Jupiter and its path around its star creates one of the most dramatic atmospheric tests astronomers can observe beyond our…
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has delivered the sharpest X-ray view yet of the jet launched by the supermassive black hole in Messier 87, the galaxy that became famous in 2019 when the Event Horizon Telescope captured the first direct image of a black hole’s shadow. The new Chandra work follows the jet across 13 years…
