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The report of a 10,000 solar mass black hole in a dwarf galaxy provides new clues about how supermassive black holes form and grow with their host galaxies.
Although dark matter cannot be seen, it can be studied by the gravitational effect of dark objects on the light from background stars. New observations of the nearby Andromeda galaxy probe the possibility that the dark matter could be small black holes.
The future of Solar System exploration lies in the subsurface of rocky bodies, including planets. Robots provide a relatively cost-effective and safe method of probing the subsurface; this Perspective summarizes recent efforts in robotic drilling and regolith-sampling methods, concluding with a summary of China’s future space exploration plans.
The first detection of emission from carbon monoxide molecules in a circumstellar envelope delivered a tool for estimating numerous physical characteristics of evolved stars, not least the amount of gas and dust they return to the interstellar medium of a galaxy.
The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is the key to understanding the matter cycle in the Universe. Edwin Salpeter’s paper of 1955 founded this research field. Evidence today, however, challenges the initial mass function as an invariant probability distribution function.
After 30 years of searching, the helium hydride ion, the first chemical bond that was formed in the Universe, has finally been detected outside the laboratory, in the interstellar medium. It was seen in planetary nebula NGC 7027 using the GREAT spectrometer aboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy.
While the measurements of the Hubble constant from the local distance ladder and the cosmic microwave background radiation appear to disagree, given a sufficient number of localized detections, gravitational waves may possibly shed light on the tension.
This article reviews radio emission mechanisms in radio-quiet active galactic nuclei (AGNs), from star formation and AGN winds, to free-free emission from photoionized gas and AGN disk coronal activity. These mechanisms can be probed by sensitive radio observatories.
In 1951, three separate research groups established radio astronomy as a contender to the dominance of optical astronomy. Using the interstellar 21-cm line, they provided a method to look deeper into our own Galaxy and back in time to the birth of all galaxies.
The winds from growing supermassive black holes appear to be located tens of parsecs from the centres of their host galaxies. This location fits with the idea that these outflows influence the progression of star formation.
Since the discovery of the first repeating fast radio burst in 2016, debate has raged over whether it represented a distinct population. With the recent detection of a second repeater using CHIME, the debate is closer to being settled.
Recent observations with the Gaia satellite have confirmed that the cores of cooling white dwarf stars undergo crystallization, as predicted half a century ago.
Microphotonic frequency combs are chip-based light sources, until now confined to optics laboratories. Improved stabilities usher these devices out of the lab and into high-resolution astronomic spectrometer systems.
