Baby neutron star
Astronomers may have found the youngest known example of a neutron star. Located in a dwarf galaxy 395 million lightyears away, it does not appear in images taken in 1998, but is in observations taken from 2018 onward, suggesting it appeared in the interim.
Dying stars forge complex carbon
Dying stars could forge tiny cylinders made of carbon atoms, known as nanotubes, which were discovered in the interstellar medium decades ago. Researchers in a lab subjected silicon carbide (which is commonly found around dead stars) to conditions found around stars in their final stages of life and found that it formed the rod-like structures.
Fire at Kitt Peak
A wildfire passed by the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona in late June, destroying four support buildings, though it did not reach the 23 telescopes. At time of writing it was still too dangerous to determine if any of the telescopes were damaged, but they will remain inoperable until infrastructure such as the power supply is repaired.
Lucy continues on
NASA has announced that the Lucy spacecraft can complete its mission, despite failing to deploy and latch its solar panels properly after launch in October 2021. Lucy will continue on to the orbit of Jupiter, where it will study the Trojan asteroids that can be found there.
Mysterious blue blobs
A novel class of lonely, irregularly distributed collections of stars has been newly identified. Closer inspection of five ‘blue blobs’ has revealed they are similar to dwarf galaxies, but appear to have no parent galaxy. The nearest examples to Earth are some 300,000 lightyears away.
Gaia’s third data release
ESA’s Gaia satellite has released its third batch of data, giving updated measurements of the age, composition, temperature and motion of over two billion stars. The data has also yielded unexpected discoveries, such as detecting starquakes on stellar surfaces – something it wasn’t designed to do.