Welcome to the virtual summer American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting! Astrobites is attending the conference as usual, and we will report highlights from each day here. If you’d like to see more timely updates during the day, we encourage you to search the #aas238 hashtag on twitter.
We’ll be posting once a day during the meeting, so be sure the visit the site often to catch all the news!
This composite image of NGC4535 shows a Hubble image of the galaxy, overlaid with new ALMA observations of the galaxy’s molecular clouds. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/PHANGS, S. Dagnello (NRAO)]
Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn
NASA s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team recently flight-certified all 24 of the detectors the mission needs. When Roman launches in the mid-2020s, these devices will convert starlight into electrical signals, which will then be decoded into 300-megapixel images of large patches of the sky. These images will allow astronomers to explore a vast array of celestial objects and phenomena, bringing us closer to solving many pressing cosmic mysteries. As the telescope s eyes, Roman s detectors will enable all of the mission s science, said John Gygax, the focal plane system manager for the Roman Space Telescope at NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Now, based on our testing results, our team can confirm these infrared detectors meet all the requirements for Roman s purposes.
The James Webb Space Telescope is Hubble's successor. On June 1, 2021, space officials announced its launch will likely slip from October 31 to mid-November.
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IMAGE: Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have tracked down two brief, powerful radio bursts to the spiral arms of the two galaxies shown above. The two images at left show. view more
Credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Alexandra Mannings (UC Santa Cruz), Wen-fai Fong (Northwestern) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Astronomers using NASA s Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies.
Called fast radio bursts (FRBs), these extraordinary events generate as much energy in a thousandth of a second as the Sun does in a year. Because these transient radio pulses disappear in much less than the blink of an eye, researchers have had a hard time tracking down where they come from, much less determining what kind of object or objects is causing them. Therefore, most of the time, astronomers don t know exactly where to look.
Spaceflight Insider
Laurel Kornfeld
May 11th, 2021
An artist’s rendering of 10 hot Jupiters, exoplanets physically similar to Jupiter that orbit very close to their parent star, studied by Dr. David Sing of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Astrophysical Sciences. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Sing
The various methods used over the last 25 years to discover exoplanets and the science of categorizing the many types of exoplanets that have been found was the focus of an April 19 workshop for science writers sponsored by the
Space Telescope Science Institute (
STScI virtual
symposium centering on the formation, structure, and evolution of the more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered to date. Speakers included Dr. Jessie Christiansen of