Astronomy News

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features IC 3476, a dwarf galaxy that lies about 54 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices. While this image does not look very dramatic – we might say it looks almost serene – the actual physical events taking place in IC 3476 are highly energetic. In fact, the little galaxy is undergoing a process called ram pressure stripping that is driving unusually high levels of star formation in regions of the galaxy. 

The gas and dust that permeates space exerts pressure on a galaxy as it moves. This resistance, called ram pressure, can strip a galaxy of its star-forming gas and dust, reducing or even stopping the creation of new stars. However, ram pressure can also compress gas in other parts of the galaxy, which can boost star formation. This may be happening in IC 3476. The galaxy appears to have absolutely no star formation along its edges, which bear the brunt of the ram pressure stripping, but star formation rates deeper within the galaxy are noticeably above average. 

Text credit: European Space Agency (ESA)

Media Contact:

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

Astronomers have found a new moon around Uranus and two orbiting Neptune – the first moons discovered orbiting these planets in a decade and the faintest ever spotted

Positronium has the potential to revolutionise physics but the elusive substance had been too hot to handle.

Nature, Published online: 22 February 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00555-1

Astrophysicist whose radio-wave observations confirmed the Big Bang origin of the Universe.

Nature, Published online: 22 February 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00528-4

Decades-long quest ends as the landmark observatory detects signs of the 1987 blast’s central neutron star.

Nature, Published online: 23 February 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00549-z

After a nailbiting descent, the Odysseus spacecraft lands near the lunar south pole and prepares to kick off a week of data-gathering.

Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed that a nearby supernova researchers have been watching since it exploded in 1987 left behind a hot neutron star

Intuitive Machines has landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the moon, making it the first private company to achieve a feat previously only accomplished by national space agencies

Science, Volume 383, Issue 6685, Page 808-808, February 2024.

Artificial intelligence software is being used to look for signs of alien lifeforms.

Nature, Published online: 21 February 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00310-6

The afterglow of a long burst of γ-rays suggests that the events leading to these explosions can be sizeable sources of some of the Universe’s rare isotopes — and that classifications of γ-ray bursts are too simplistic.

Nature, Published online: 21 February 2024; doi:10.1038/s41586-023-06979-5

A modelling analysis shows that an unusually long gamma-ray burst gave rise to a lanthanide-rich kilonova following the merger of a neutron star–neutron star or of a neutron star–black hole.

Europe's pioneering ERS-2 Earth observation spacecraft will make an uncontrolled dive to destruction.

Light from the celestial object, which is 500tn times brighter than our sun, travelled for more than 12bn years to reach Earth

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The brightest known object in the universe, a quasar 500tn times brighter than our sun, was “hiding in plain sight”, researchers say.

Australian scientists spotted a quasar powered by the fastest growing black hole ever discovered. Its mass is about 17bn times that of our solar system’s sun, and it devours the equivalent of a sun a day.

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This article was amended to correct the size of the primary mirror of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which is 8 metres, not 39m as previously stated.

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Investigations into quantum computing mishaps caused by high-powered particles from space have revealed that these cosmic rays are responsible for a significant number of errors

Nature, Published online: 19 February 2024; doi:10.1038/d41586-024-00484-z

Phil Korngut tests NASA’s SPHEREx telescope under extreme conditions at his laboratory in California.

Astronomers have found a quasar 12 billion light years away hosting a supermassive black hole that gobbles up a sun-sized amount of mass every day

Earth lacks some of the ingredients that would have been key to the origins of life – they may have been delivered to glacial ponds by tiny specks of cosmic dust

3 min read

Discovery Alert: Glowing Cloud Points to a Cosmic Collision This illustration depicts the aftermath of a collision between two giant exoplanets. What remains is a hot, molten planetary core and a swirling, glowing cloud of dust and debris. Mark A. Garlick The Discovery: 

A glowing cosmic cloud has revealed a cataclysmic collision.

Key Facts:

Even within our own solar system, scientists have seen evidence of giant, planetary collisions from long ago. Remaining clues like Uranus’ tilt and the existence of Earth’s moon point to times in our distant history when the planets in our stellar neighborhood slammed together, forever changing their shape and place in orbit. Scientists looking outside our solar system to far off exoplanets can spot similar evidence that, across the universe, planets sometimes crash. In this new study, the evidence of such an impact comes from a cloud of dust and gas with a strange, fluctuating luminosity. 

Details: 

Scientists were observing a young (300-million-year-old) Sun-like star when they noticed something odd: the star suddenly and significantly dipped in brightness. A team of researchers looked a little closer and they found that, just before this dip, the star displayed a sudden spike in infrared luminosity. 

In studying the star, the team found that this luminosity lasted for 1,000 days. But 2.5 years into this bright event, the star was unexpectedly eclipsed by something, causing the sudden dip in brightness. This eclipse endured for 500 days. 

The team investigated further and found that the culprit behind both the spike in luminosity and the eclipse was a giant, glowing cloud of gas and dust. And the most likely reason for the sudden, eclipse-causing cloud? A cosmic collision between two exoplanets, one of which likely contained ice, the researchers think.

In a new study detailing these events, scientists suggest that two giant exoplanets anywhere from several to tens of Earth masses crashed into one another, creating both the infrared spike and the cloud. A crash like this would completely liquify the two planets, leaving behind a single molten core surrounded by a cloud of gas, hot rock, and dust.

After the crash, this cloud, still holding the hot, glowing remnant of the collision, continued to orbit the star, eventually moving in front of and eclipsing the star.

Fun Facts: 

This study was conducted using archival data from NASA’s now-retired WISE mission – the spacecraft continues to operate under the name NEOWISE. This star was first detected in 2021 by the ground-based robotic survey ASAS-SN (All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae). 

While this data revealed remnants of this planetary collision, the glow of this crash should still be visible to telescopes like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. In fact, the research team behind this study is already putting together proposals to observe the system with Webb. 

Discoverers: 

The study, “A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud,” was published Oct. 11, 2023, in Nature by lead author Matthew Kenworthy alongside 21 co-authors. 

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Details Last Updated Feb 16, 2024 Related Terms

• Exoplanet Discoveries
• Exoplanets
• Gas Giant Exoplanets
• Missions
• The Universe
• WISE (Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer)

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