Search Publications
Spatial variations in aromatic hydrocarbon emission in a dust-rich galaxy
Hutchison, Taylor A.; Rigby, Jane R.; Whitaker, Katherine E. +36 more
Dust grains absorb half of the radiation emitted by stars throughout the history of the universe, re-emitting this energy at infrared wavelengths1-3. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are large organic molecules that trace millimetre-size dust grains and regulate the cooling of interstellar gas within galaxies4,5. Obser…
A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit
Olofsson, G.; Pagano, I.; Dhillon, V. S. +56 more
Planetary rings are observed not only around giant planets1, but also around small bodies such as the Centaur Chariklo2 and the dwarf planet Haumea3. Up to now, all known dense rings were located close enough to their parent bodies, being inside the Roche limit, where tidal forces prevent material with reasonable d…
A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3
Papovich, Casey; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Barro, Guillermo +30 more
The majority of massive disk galaxies in the local Universe show a stellar barred structure in their central regions, including our Milky Way1,2. Bars are supposed to develop in dynamically cold stellar disks at low redshift, as the strong gas turbulence typical of disk galaxies at high redshift suppresses or delays bar formation3,…
High atmospheric metal enrichment for a Saturn-mass planet
Stassun, Keivan G.; Mansfield, Megan; Bean, Jacob L. +9 more
Atmospheric metal enrichment (that is, elements heavier than helium, also called `metallicity') is a key diagnostic of the formation of giant planets1-3. The giant planets of the Solar System show an inverse relationship between mass and both their bulk metallicities and atmospheric metallicities. Extrasolar giant planets also display a…
Spherical symmetry in the kilonova AT2017gfo/GW170817
Kotak, Rubina; Watson, Darach; Sim, Stuart +5 more
The mergers of neutron stars expel a heavy-element enriched fireball that can be observed as a kilonova1-4. The kilonova's geometry is a key diagnostic of the merger and is dictated by the properties of ultra-dense matter and the energetics of the collapse to a black hole. Current hydrodynamical merger models typically show aspherical e…
Outflows from the youngest stars are mostly molecular
Östlin, G.; Güdel, M.; Ray, T. P. +20 more
The formation of stars and planets is accompanied not only by the build-up of matter, namely accretion, but also by its expulsion in the form of highly supersonic jets that can stretch for several parsecs1,2. As accretion and jet activity are correlated and because young stars acquire most of their mass rapidly early on, the most powerf…
A resonant sextuplet of sub-Neptunes transiting the bright star HD 110067
Alonso, R.; Deleuil, M.; Erikson, A. +149 more
Planets with radii between that of the Earth and Neptune (hereafter referred to as `sub-Neptunes') are found in close-in orbits around more than half of all Sun-like stars1,2. However, their composition, formation and evolution remain poorly understood3. The study of multiplanetary systems offers an opportunity to investigate…
Intracluster light is already abundant at redshift beyond unity
Jee, M. James; Joo, Hyungjin
Intracluster light (ICL) is diffuse light from stars that are gravitationally bound not to individual member galaxies, but to the halo of galaxy clusters. Leading theories1,2 predict that the ICL fraction, defined by the ratio of the ICL to the total light, rapidly decreases with increasing redshift, to the level of a few per cent at z …
A close quasar pair in a disk-disk galaxy merger at z = 2.17
Shen, Yue; Oguri, Masamune; Chen, Yu-Ching +7 more
Galaxy mergers produce pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which may be witnessed as dual quasars if both SMBHs are rapidly accreting. The kiloparsec (kpc)-scale separation represents a physical regime sufficiently close for merger-induced effects to be important1 yet wide enough to be directly resolvable with the facilities curr…
Bipolar outflows out to 10 kpc for massive galaxies at redshift z ≈ 1
Bacon, Roland; Blaizot, Jérémy; Boogaard, Leindert A. +15 more
Galactic outflows are believed to play a critical role in the evolution of galaxies by regulating their mass build-up and star formation1. Theoretical models assume bipolar shapes for the outflows that extend well into the circumgalactic medium (CGM), up to tens of kiloparsecs (kpc) perpendicular to the galaxies. They have been directly…