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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…
Growing supermassive black holes in the late stages of galaxy mergers are heavily obscured
Sanders, D. B.; Harrison, F.; Stern, D. +10 more
Mergers of galaxies are thought to cause significant gas inflows to the inner parsecs, which can activate rapid accretion on to supermassive black holes (SMBHs), giving rise to active galactic nuclei (AGN). During a significant fraction of this process, SMBHs are predicted to be enshrouded by gas and dust. Studying 52 galactic nuclei in infrared-s…
HD 209458b in new light: evidence of nitrogen chemistry, patchy clouds and sub-solar water
Madhusudhan, Nikku; MacDonald, Ryan J.
Interpretations of exoplanetary transmission spectra have been undermined by apparent obscuration due to clouds/hazes. Debate rages on whether weak H2O features seen in exoplanet spectra are due to clouds or inherently depleted oxygen. Assertions of solar H2O abundances have relied on making a priori model assumptions, for ex…
iPTF16geu: A multiply imaged, gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova
Sollerman, J.; Kulkarni, S. R.; Sullivan, M. +31 more
We report the discovery of a multiply imaged, gravitationally lensed type Ia supernova, iPTF16geu (SN 2016geu), at redshift z = 0.409. This phenomenon was identified because the light from the stellar explosion was magnified more than 50 times by the curvature of space around matter in an intervening galaxy. We used high-spatial-resolution observa…
First Evidence of Running Cosmic Vacuum: Challenging the Concordance Model
Solà, Joan; Gómez-Valent, Adrià; de Cruz Pérez, Javier
Despite the fact that a rigid {{Λ }}-term is a fundamental building block of the concordance ΛCDM model, we show that a large class of cosmological scenarios with dynamical vacuum energy density {ρ }{{Λ }} together with a dynamical gravitational coupling G or a possible non-conservation of matter, are capable of seriously challenging th…
The Python Sky Model: software for simulating the Galactic microwave sky
Dunkley, J.; Alonso, D.; Thorne, B. +1 more
We present a numerical code to simulate maps of Galactic emission in intensity and polarization at microwave frequencies, aiding in the design of cosmic microwave background experiments. This python code builds on existing efforts to simulate the sky by providing an easy-to-use interface and is based on publicly available data from the WMAP (Wilki…
The Kepler Follow-up Observation Program. I. A Catalog of Companions to Kepler Stars from High-Resolution Imaging
Teske, J. K.; Barrado, D.; Ciardi, D. R. +16 more
We present results from high-resolution, optical to near-IR imaging of host stars of Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs), identified in the original Kepler field. Part of the data were obtained under the Kepler imaging follow-up observation program over six years (2009-2015). Almost 90% of stars that are hosts to planet candidates or confirmed plane…
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…
Prospects for detection of detached double white dwarf binaries with Gaia, LSST and LISA
Toonen, Silvia; Brown, Anthony G. A.; Nelemans, Gijs +3 more
Double white dwarf (DWD) binaries are expected to be very common in the Milky Way, but their intrinsic faintness challenges the detection of these systems. Currently, only a few tens of detached DWDs are know. Such systems offer the best chance of extracting the physical properties that would allow us to address a wealth of outstanding questions r…
Intermittent energy dissipation by turbulent reconnection
Eastwood, J. P.; André, M.; Vaivads, A. +5 more
Magnetic reconnection—the process responsible for many explosive phenomena in both nature and laboratory—is efficient at dissipating magnetic energy into particle energy. To date, exactly how this dissipation happens remains unclear, owing to the scarcity of multipoint measurements of the "diffusion region" at the sub-ion scale. Here we report suc…