Astrobites

Not All Black Holes Who Wander Are Lost

Astrobites reports on a new diagnostic tool used to understand how the neighborhood a black hole grows up in may affect the rest of its life.

Illustration of a brown dwarf orbiting a white dwarf

The white dwarf–brown dwarf pair J0404+1112 — one of only about a dozen known systems like it — offers researchers a chance to study a substellar atmosphere blasted with intense radiation.

The formation of young binary protostars.

Globular clusters have far fewer binary stars than the solar neighborhood. New research identifies black hole burning as the culprit.

solar spicules

Why do spicules — tiny spikes of plasma on the Sun — appear to rotate, split, and merge? New simulations reveal the possible cause of these motions.

NGC 2467

Astrobites reports on why interstellar magnetic fields can appear ordered or tangled, depending on which gas clouds you measure and how.

triple-star system containing the pulsar PSR J0435+3233
Features

A Pulsar in a Rare Triple System

Researchers have discovered a millisecond pulsar with two stellar companions — one of only a handful of these rapidly spinning stellar remnants known to be in a triple system.

Illustration of the exoplanet WASP-12 b.

The hot Jupiter WASP-12b is on a collision course with its host star, and it’s heading that way faster than expected. New research examines a possible explanation for the planet’s speedy inspiraling.

A new catalog of giant pulses from the Crab Nebula pulsar reveals a feature predicted to exist but not seen until now.

SPHEREx

Astrobites reports on NASA’s SPHEREx mission, which is collecting an infrared spectrum for every point in the sky — potentially revolutionizing our understanding of cosmic inflation, galaxy formation, and interstellar ices.