Abell 2261: On the Hunt for a Missing Giant Black Hole
It is currently believed that all massive galaxies should have a black hole in their core that is proportional in size to the spheroid of that galaxy and the motions of its stars… until folks started looking at the central galaxy in the cluster Abell 2261.
This Week in Sky Watching: December 17 – 24
This Week in Sky Watching: Ursids meteor shower, December solstice, and a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.
A Robust Proxy for Geomagnetic Reversal Rates in Deep Time
In new results presented at AGU by Courtney Sprain, an international team looked for a relationship between the strength of Earth’s magnetic field and the likelihood it will flip. This, it turns out, is the relationship to watch.
Dust from Receding Glaciers May Have Major Atmospheric Impacts
In new research presented at AGU’s Fall Meeting, scientists collected airborne dust that was released into the atmosphere after the swift melting of a glacier in northern Canada. The results were… not good.
A pair of lonely planet-like objects born like stars
Designated CFHTWIR-Oph 98, or just Oph 98 for short, a newly analyzed system contains two small objects that are 8 and 15 Jupiter masses in size. While the larger of these two may have had nuclear burning, the smaller one probably didn’t.
Cornell postdoc detects possible exoplanet radio emission
A team of researchers led by Jake Turner of Cornell University recently published a new paper in Astronomy & Astrophysics that explains how they detected a radio emission from an exoplanet in the Tau Boötes system, some 51 light-years away.
Updates on Hayabusa2 Return Sample Mission
Hayabusa2’s Ryugu sample is back on Earth and has finally made it to its lab at the JAXA Sagamihara Campus. The sample outgassed in the container as well, bringing us gaseous volatiles from an asteroid.
Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment
Scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to image and track a storm on the surface of Neptune. This latest storm did something unusual: reversed direction and possibly spun off a remnant.
Russian Space Forces successfully tests Angara-A5 heavy rocket
On December 14th at 05:50 UTC, the Russian Space Forces successfully launched the second Angara A5 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome.
SiriusXM’s latest satellite launches aboard SpaceX Falcon 9
On December 13th at 17:30 UTC, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Onboard was SiriusXM’s SXM-7, the seventh satellite in their constellation that provides satellite radio.
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