McDonald Observatory – Astronomy Now

Exoplanet found in unusually long, elliptical orbit

28 August 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers find an exoplanet three times more massive than Jupiter in an extreme elliptical orbit, another milestone for the radial velocity detection technique.

Do stars fall quietly into black holes?

30 May 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University have put a basic principle of black holes to the test, showing that matter completely vanishes when pulled in. Their results constitute another successful test for Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

A new kind of supermassive black hole born in the infant universe

7 July 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have discovered evidence for an unusual kind of black hole born extremely early in the universe. They showed that a recently discovered unusual source of intense radiation is likely powered by a “direct-collapse black hole,” a type of object predicted by theorists more than a decade ago.

Newborn giant exoplanet found orbiting close to its parent star

20 June 2016 Astronomy Now

A team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of a young planet known as K2-33b, only 11 million years old, that orbits very close to its star (at 0.05 astronomical units), with an orbital period of 5.4 days. Approximately five times the size of the Earth, the new planet is a “super-Neptune” and the youngest such planet known.

Young star appears to be stripping away layers of close-orbiting ‘hot Jupiter’

9 June 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers searching for the galaxy’s youngest planets have found compelling evidence for one unlike any other, a newborn “hot Jupiter” whose outer layers are being torn away by the star it orbits every 11 hours. Dubbed “PTFO8-8695 b,” the suspected planet orbits a star about 1,100 light-years from Earth and is at most twice the mass of Jupiter.

Astronomers find giant planet around very young star CI Tauri

27 May 2016 Astronomy Now

Contradicting the long-standing idea that large Jupiter-mass planets take a minimum of 10 million years to form, astronomers have just announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a 2 million-year-old star that still retains a disc of circumstellar gas and dust. CI Tau b is at least eight times larger than Jupiter and 450 light-years from Earth.

Supermassive black hole found in an unlikely place

7 April 2016 Astronomy Now

A near-record 17-billion-solar-mass black hole discovered in a sparse area of the local universe indicates that these monster objects may be more common than once thought. The newly discovered supermassive black hole is in NGC 1600, an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Eridanus some 149 million light-years away.

First discovery of a binary companion for a Type Ia supernova

23 March 2016 Astronomy Now

A team of astronomers has detected a flash of light from the companion star to supernova 2012cg that lies in the edge-on spiral NGC 4424, 50 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. This is the first time that the impact of an exploding star on its neighbour has been witnessed.

Astronomer solves mystery of ‘born again’ stars with Hubble

7 December 2015 Astronomy Now

University of Texas astronomer Natalie Gosnell has used the Hubble Space Telescope to better understand why some stars aren’t evolving as predicted. These so-called “blue stragglers” look hotter and bluer than they should for their advanced age. It’s almost as it they were somehow reinvigorated to look much younger than they really are.

Hubble survey reveals early galaxies were more efficient at making stars

21 November 2015 Astronomy Now

A study just published by University of Texas at Austin assistant professor Steven Finkelstein and colleagues reveals that galaxies were more efficient at making stars when the universe was younger. The announcement explains the team’s discovery that there are a lot more bright, highly star-forming galaxies in the early universe than scientists previously thought.