Search Publications
No thick carbon dioxide atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c
Kreidberg, Laura; Meadows, Victoria S.; Lincowski, Andrew P. +16 more
Seven rocky planets orbit the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, providing a unique opportunity to search for atmospheres on small planets outside the Solar System1. Thanks to the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), possible atmospheric constituents such as carbon dioxide (CO2) are now detectable2,3.…
Momentum transfer from the DART mission kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos
Zinzi, Angelo; Cheng, Andrew F.; Dall'Ora, Massimo +66 more
The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission performed a kinetic impact on asteroid Dimorphos, the satellite of the binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, at 23:14 UTC on 26 September 2022 as a planetary defence test1. DART was the first hypervelocity impact experiment on an asteroid at size and velocity scales relevant to planeta…
Orbital period change of Dimorphos due to the DART kinetic impact
Morrell, Nidia; Cheng, Andrew F.; Dominik, Martin +46 more
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully performed the first test of a kinetic impactor for asteroid deflection by impacting Dimorphos, the secondary of near-Earth binary asteroid (65803) Didymos, and changing the orbital period of Dimorphos. A change in orbital period of approximately 7 min was expected if the incident …
A broadband thermal emission spectrum of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-18b
Henning, Thomas; Fortney, Jonathan J.; Carter, Aarynn L. +73 more
Close-in giant exoplanets with temperatures greater than 2,000 K (`ultra-hot Jupiters') have been the subject of extensive efforts to determine their atmospheric properties using thermal emission measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Spitzer Space Telescope1-3. However, previous studies have yielded inconsistent results…
A reflective, metal-rich atmosphere for GJ 1214b from its JWST phase curve
McGill, Peter; Fu, Guangwei; Stevenson, Kevin B. +30 more
There are no planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune in our Solar System, yet these objects are found around a substantial fraction of other stars1. Population statistics show that close-in planets in this size range bifurcate into two classes on the basis of their radii2,3. It is proposed that the group with l…
Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6
Baba, Shunsuke; Treu, Tommaso; Fujimoto, Seiji +41 more
The detection of starlight from the host galaxies of quasars during the reionization epoch (z > 6) has been elusive, even with deep Hubble Space Telescope observations1,2. The current highest redshift quasar host detected3, at z = 4.5, required the magnifying effect of a foreground lensing galaxy. Low-luminosity quasars
The nature of an ultra-faint galaxy in the cosmic dark ages seen with JWST
Santini, Paola; Castellano, Marco; Fontana, Adriano +44 more
In the first billion years after the Big Bang, sources of ultraviolet (UV) photons are believed to have ionized intergalactic hydrogen, rendering the Universe transparent to UV radiation. Galaxies brighter than the characteristic luminosity L* (refs. 1,2) do not provide enough ionizing photons to drive this cosmic reionization. Fainter …
Ejecta from the DART-produced active asteroid Dimorphos
Granvik, Mikael; Kolokolova, Ludmilla; Weaver, Harold A. +61 more
Some active asteroids have been proposed to be formed as a result of impact events1. Because active asteroids are generally discovered by chance only after their tails have fully formed, the process of how impact ejecta evolve into a tail has, to our knowledge, not been directly observed. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) miss…
Carbonaceous dust grains seen in the first billion years of cosmic time
Chevallard, Jacopo; Carniani, Stefano; D'Eugenio, Francesco +39 more
Large dust reservoirs (up to approximately 108 M⊙) have been detected1-3 in galaxies out to redshift z ≃ 8, when the age of the Universe was only about 600 Myr. Generating substantial amounts of dust within such a short timescale has proven challenging for theories of dust formation4,5 and has prompted t…
A long-period radio transient active for three decades
de Martino, D.; Heywood, I.; Rea, N. +22 more
Several long-period radio transients have recently been discovered, with strongly polarized coherent radio pulses appearing on timescales between tens to thousands of seconds1,2. In some cases, the radio pulses have been interpreted as coming from rotating neutron stars with extremely strong magnetic fields, known as magnetars; the orig…