Search Publications
The close environments of accreting massive black holes are shaped by radiative feedback
Lamperti, Isabella; Ho, Luis C.; Fabian, Andrew C. +13 more
The majority of the accreting supermassive black holes in the Universe are obscured by large columns of gas and dust. The location and evolution of this obscuring material have been the subject of intense research in the past decades, and are still debated. A decrease in the covering factor of the circumnuclear material with increasing accretion r…
Strongly baryon-dominated disk galaxies at the peak of galaxy formation ten billion years ago
Lutz, D.; Wuyts, S.; Förster Schreiber, N. M. +28 more
In the cold dark matter cosmology, the baryonic components of galaxies—stars and gas—are thought to be mixed with and embedded in non-baryonic and non-relativistic dark matter, which dominates the total mass of the galaxy and its dark-matter halo. In the local (low-redshift) Universe, the mass of dark matter within a galactic disk increases with d…
An ultrahot gas-giant exoplanet with a stratosphere
Deming, Drake; Knutson, Heather; Nikolov, Nikolay +24 more
Infrared radiation emitted from a planet contains information about the chemical composition and vertical temperature profile of its atmosphere. If upper layers are cooler than lower layers, molecular gases will produce absorption features in the planetary thermal spectrum. Conversely, if there is a stratosphere—where temperature increases with al…
Star formation inside a galactic outflow
Maiolino, R.; Sturm, E.; Colina, L. +13 more
Recent observations have revealed massive galactic molecular outflows that may have the physical conditions (high gas densities) required to form stars. Indeed, several recent models predict that such massive outflows may ignite star formation within the outflow itself. This star-formation mode, in which stars form with high radial velocities, cou…
The response of relativistic outflowing gas to the inner accretion disk of a black hole
Fabian, Andrew C.; Reynolds, Christopher S.; Middleton, Matthew J. +21 more
The brightness of an active galactic nucleus is set by the gas falling onto it from the galaxy, and the gas infall rate is regulated by the brightness of the active galactic nucleus; this feedback loop is the process by which supermassive black holes in the centres of galaxies may moderate the growth of their hosts. Gas outflows (in the form of di…
A massive, dead disk galaxy in the early Universe
Richard, Johan; Gallazzi, Anna; Zibetti, Stefano +10 more
At redshift z = 2, when the Universe was just three billion years old, half of the most massive galaxies were extremely compact and had already exhausted their fuel for star formation. It is believed that they were formed in intense nuclear starbursts and that they ultimately grew into the most massive local elliptical galaxies seen today, through…
Solar abundance ratios of the iron-peak elements in the Perseus cluster
Done, Chris; Safi-Harb, Samar; Hamaguchi, Kenji +191 more
The metal abundance of the hot plasma that permeates galaxy clusters represents the accumulation of heavy elements produced by billions of supernovae. Therefore, X-ray spectroscopy of the intracluster medium provides an opportunity to investigate the nature of supernova explosions integrated over cosmic time. In particular, the abundance of the ir…
Cassini’s 13 years of stunning Saturn science — in pictures
Witze, Alexandra
As the mission speeds towards its conclusion, Nature takes a look at what researchers have learnt about the planet’s moons, rings and tempest-filled skies.
A continuum from clear to cloudy hot-Jupiter exoplanets without primordial water depletion
Deming, Drake; Nikolov, Nikolay; Fortney, Jonathan J. +18 more
Thousands of transiting exoplanets have been discovered, but spectral analysis of their atmospheres has so far been dominated by a small number of exoplanets and data spanning relatively narrow wavelength ranges (such as 1.1-1.7 micrometres). Recent studies show that some hot-Jupiter exoplanets have much weaker water absorption features in their n…
The quiescent intracluster medium in the core of the Perseus cluster
Done, Chris; Safi-Harb, Samar; Hamaguchi, Kenji +213 more
Clusters of galaxies are the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the Universe and are still forming. They are thus important probes of cosmological parameters and many astrophysical processes. However, knowledge of the dynamics of the pervasive hot gas, the mass of which is much larger than the combined mass of all the stars in the clust…