Research Highlights
The earliest multi-arm spiral galaxy confirmed
03 1月 2023JWST multi-band-imaging observations of A2744-DSG-z3, the most distant spiral galaxy that has been seen so far. Image credit: Cai, Wu, Sun, Tsinghua University and The University of Arizona.Spiral-like structures are widely regarded to be caused by gravitational instability, while different spirals are formed in different ways. When and how these spirals form is still a mystery. Fortunately, re...
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Chickens or eggs? ALMA rings as planet factories
12 12月 2022Protoplanetary disks, the cradle of planets, contain a large amount of building blocks for planet formation -- (sub)millimeter-size solid particles -- pebbles. Yet, how, when, and where planets start to form is an outstanding question. In the past decade, through the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, it was revealed that a large number of protoplanetary disks are rin...
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Amateur and professional astronomers team up to identify rare binary star systems
05 7月 2022An illustration showing a binary star circled by a warped circumbinary disk. Once every orbit, one of the stars in the binary passes behind the disk and its light is blocked from our view. Image credit: Poon, Zhu, Zanazzi, University of Toronto; Sahl Rowther et al., Warwick University.An international team led by Tsinghua astronomer Prof. Wei Zhu has identified only the second and third example...
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A new model for the dynamics of TRAPPIST-1's seven Earth-like planets
22 2月 2022The red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 is home to the largest number (which is seven) of Earth-sized planets ever found in a single planet system. Three of these planets may be suitable to harbor liquid water or even life and will be prime targets for the recently-launched JWST spacecraft. Different from the terrestrial planets in our solar system, scientists have determined that it is likely that the T...
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Are substructures in different components of protoplanetary disks correlated?
14 1月 2022Image credit: Law et al. 2021, MAPS IIIIt is commonly believed that planets form in disks surrounding young stars, but how exactly this happens remains an outstanding question. In recent years, astronomers have made great strides in directly observing protoplanetary disks using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), located in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile. By observing...
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PolarLight Reveals the Corona Geometry in Sco X-1
10 1月 2022On 2022 January 1, Hua Feng and his collaborators reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters a significant detection of X-ray polarization in Sco X-1 with the space mission PolarLight, which has been operating on-orbit for more than three years since its launch in 2018 October. The results help place stringent constraints on the geometry of the hot corona, and mark Sco X-1 as the second astr...
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