Research
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2024.11.08
A Hyperactive Fast Radio Burst in a “Clean” Environment
The Greenbank Telescope and the related research highlight report can be found @ https://greenbankobservatory.org/news/u-s-national-science-foundation-green-bank-telescope-records-fastest-fast-radio-burst-yet/ Fast radio bursts (FRB) are intense radio transients from deep space, lasting only a few milliseconds. These bursts release an extraordinary amount of energy, with a single burst able to ...
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2024.10.21
Understanding the composition of clouds on exoplanets
Exoplanet's atmosphere contains the information where the planet is formed and how it accretes and evolves. Probing the atmosphere from the molecular lines in the transmission and emission spectrum unveils the chemical composition of the planet. However, an uncertain factor in retrieving exoplanet spectra is the presence of clouds. Clouds affect the transmission and emission spectrum by smearin...
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2024.09.27
A Two-Earth-mass Planet Found Orbiting a Dead “Sun”
Images of the area of the microlensing event, indicated by perpendicular white lines two weeks after peak magnification of the background star in 2020, taken by CFHT with seeing of ~ 0.5 arcsec (Left) and in 2023 after its disappearance, obtained by Keck-II with seeing of ~0.08 arcsec (Right). The planetary system with a white dwarf, a two-Earth-mass planet and brown dwarf cannot be seen; the p...
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2024.04.18
JWST and VLT search for the signature of the First Stars
The first stars, known as Population III stars, were born approximately 100 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was less than 1% of its present age. Population III stars are of fundamental importance to the initial mass function (IMF) of stars, which determines how the universe has evolved over time (see Fig. 1). As Population III stars are shortly lived, they rapidly enrich the ...
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2024.04.17
Bridging the Gap between Luminous Red Novae and Common Envelope Evolution
Luminous red novae (LRNe) and common envelope evolution (CEE) are closely related astrophysical phenomena and evolutionary processes that are not well understood. Among them, CEE is a crucial stage in binary stellar evolution. Close compact binaries, Type Ia supernovae, hot sub-dwarfs, and gravitational wave sources may all be the product of CEE. On the other hand, LRNe are bright transients wi...
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