Search Publications
A shock flash breaking out of a dusty red supergiant
Wang, Lifan; Wang, Xiaofeng; Gao, Xing +41 more
Shock-breakout emission is light that arises when a shockwave, generated by the core-collapse explosion of a massive star, passes through its outer envelope. Hitherto, the earliest detection of such a signal was at several hours after the explosion1, although a few others had been reported2-7. The temporal evolution of early …
A high internal heat flux and large core in a warm Neptune exoplanet
Fortney, Jonathan J.; McGill, Peter; Bell, Taylor J. +16 more
Interactions between exoplanetary atmospheres and internal properties have long been proposed to be drivers of the inflation mechanisms of gaseous planets and apparent atmospheric chemical disequilibrium conditions1. However, transmission spectra of exoplanets have been limited in their ability to observationally confirm these theories …
A secondary atmosphere on the rocky exoplanet 55 Cancri e
Knutson, Heather A.; Hu, Renyu; Dragomir, Diana +14 more
Characterizing rocky exoplanets is a central aim of astronomy, and yet the search for atmospheres on rocky exoplanets has so far resulted in either tight upper limits on the atmospheric mass1-3 or inconclusive results4-6. The 1.95REarth and 8.8MEarth planet 55 Cancri e (abbreviated 55 Cnc e), with a pred…
Sulfur dioxide in the mid-infrared transmission spectrum of WASP-39b
Carter, Aarynn L.; Sing, David K.; Batalha, Natalie M. +70 more
The recent inference of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere of the hot (approximately 1,100 K), Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b from near-infrared JWST observations1-3 suggests that photochemistry is a key process in high-temperature exoplanet atmospheres4. This is because of the low (<1 ppb) abundance of SO
Quasi-periodic X-ray eruptions years after a nearby tidal disruption event
Berger, E.; Angus, C. R.; Dhillon, V. S. +61 more
Quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) are luminous bursts of soft X-rays from the nuclei of galaxies, repeating on timescales of hours to weeks1–5. The mechanism behind these rare systems is uncertain, but most theories involve accretion disks around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) undergoing instabilities6–8 or interacting with a…
A nebular origin for the persistent radio emission of fast radio bursts
Tripodi, Roberta; Savaglio, Sandra; Zhang, Bing +12 more
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration, bright (approximately Jy) extragalactic bursts, whose production mechanism is still unclear1. Recently, two repeating FRBs were found to have a physically associated persistent radio source of non-thermal origin2,3. These two FRBs have unusually large Faraday rotation measure…
A warm Neptune's methane reveals core mass and vigorous atmospheric mixing
Sing, David K.; Maiolino, Roberto; Valenti, Jeff A. +18 more
Observations of transiting gas giant exoplanets have revealed a pervasive depletion of methane1-4, which has only recently been identified atmospherically5,6. The depletion is thought to be maintained by disequilibrium processes such as photochemistry or mixing from a hotter interior7-9. However, the interiors are …
Preferential occurrence of fast radio bursts in massive star-forming galaxies
Leja, Joel; Somalwar, Jean; Hallinan, Gregg +24 more
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration events detected from beyond the Milky Way. FRB emission characteristics favour highly magnetized neutron stars, or magnetars, as the sources1, as evidenced by FRB-like bursts from a galactic magnetar2,3, and the star-forming nature of FRB host galaxies4,5. However, …
A magnetar giant flare in the nearby starburst galaxy M82
Thuillot, William; Mereghetti, Sandro; Esposito, Paolo +32 more
Magnetar giant flares are rare explosive events releasing up to 1047 erg in gamma rays in less than 1 second from young neutron stars with magnetic fields up to 1015−16 G (refs. 1,2). Only three such flares have been seen from magnetars in our Galaxy3,4 and in the Large Magellanic Cloud5 in ro…
The Radcliffe Wave is oscillating
Alves, João; Zucker, Catherine; Goodman, Alyssa A. +6 more
Our Sun lies within 300 parsecs of the 2.7-kiloparsecs-long sinusoidal chain of dense gas clouds known as the Radcliffe Wave1. The structure's wave-like shape was discovered using three-dimensional dust mapping, but initial kinematic searches for oscillatory motion were inconclusive2-7. Here we present evidence that the Radcl…