Physics and Astronomy · Instrumentation
Astronomers have studied a rapidly spinning neutron star in a roughly one-day orbit with a likely helium white dwarf. Its unusually changing orbit and signs of magnetized material between the stars suggest it may represent a transitional stage between two types of binary systems.
Astronomers have confirmed six dense groups of young galaxies from about 2.4 to 3.1 billion years after the Big Bang and reconstructed their three-dimensional structures. Galaxies in the densest regions showed brighter hydrogen emission and fewer faint emitters than galaxies in less crowded surroundings.
A review examines how pulsating stars in eclipsing binary systems can be used to study stellar interiors and the effects of tides. Space-based observations, combined with repeated measurements of starlight spectra, can provide model-independent masses and radii for thousands of systems.
Finding oxygen or methane in a rocky exoplanet’s atmosphere would not by itself show that life is present. A study in Astrobiology finds that a proposed space telescope would need to examine light from near-ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths to assess habitability and investigate nonbiological explanations.
Globular clusters around the Milky Way reveal evidence of a previously identified but debated merger that occurred about 1.8 billion years before the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus merger. The incoming system had a similar stellar mass and deposited most of it in the Milky Way’s inner 6 kiloparsecs.
