magnetic fields – Astronomy Now

Helium ‘rain’ in Saturn’s interior may influence magnetic field

7 May 2021 Astronomy Now

Data collected by the Cassini spacecraft during its final few orbits of Saturn is shedding new light on the planet’s deep interior.

Radioactive elements may be key to exoplanet habitability

22 November 2020 Astronomy Now

The amount of radioactive elements in the core of a rocky exoplanet may be a critical factor in determining its habitability.

Evidence of Uranus’ leaking atmosphere found hidden in Voyager 2 observations

27 March 2020 Keith Cooper

By going over old data collected by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, two scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center have made the startling discovery that Uranus’ atmosphere is gradually escaping into space.

Fastest-spinning brown-dwarf star is detected by its bursts of radio waves

27 June 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have detected what may be the most-rapidly-rotating, ultra-cool, brown-dwarf star ever seen. The super-fast rotation period of less than an hour was measured by using the 305-metre Arecibo radio telescope — the same telescope that was used to discover the first planets ever found outside our solar system.

How black hole jets break out of their galaxies

18 June 2016 Astronomy Now

A computer simulation of the powerful jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centres of the largest galaxies explains why some burst forth as bright beacons visible across the universe, while others fall apart and never pierce the halo of the galaxy. A jet’s hot ionised gas is propelled by the twisting magnetic fields of the central rotating black hole.

NASA directly observes fundamental process of nature for first time

14 May 2016 Astronomy Now

Like sending sensors up into a hurricane, NASA has flown four spacecraft through an invisible maelstrom in space, called magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is one of the prime drivers of space radiation and so it is a key factor in the quest to learn more about our space environment and protect our spacecraft and astronauts as we explore farther and farther from our home planet.

VLA reveals dramatic new evidence about star and planet formation

5 January 2016 Astronomy Now

A detailed study of young stars and their surroundings has produced dramatic new evidence about how multiple-star systems form and how the dusty discs that are the raw material for planets grow around young stars. Scientists used the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope to study nearly 100 newborn stars in a cloud of gas and dust about 750 light-years from Earth.

Ageing stars don’t spin down exactly as expected

5 January 2016 Astronomy Now

New information about the way mature stars spin indicates that one recently developed method for determining a star’s age needs to be recalibrated for stars that are older than our Sun, as spin rate is one of the few windows into stellar ages. This has implications for our own solar system, as our own Sun might be on the cusp of a transition in its magnetic field.

Magnetic fields in powerful radio jets from supermassive black holes

30 December 2015 Astronomy Now

Supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies can spawn tremendous bipolar jets extending over hundreds of thousands of light-years. A CfA study of the bright radio jet galaxy Pictoris suggests that bright X-ray emission from the jets is produced by rapidly moving charged particles in magnetic fields.

A research milestone in helping predict solar flares

17 November 2015 Astronomy Now

An international team of researchers, led by Queen’s University Belfast, has devised a high-precision method of examining magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere, representing a significant leap forward in the investigation of solar flares and potentially catastrophic ‘space weather’.