In a recently published study, a team of researchers led by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) at Monash university suggests an innovative method to analyse gravitational waves from neutron star mergers, where two stars are distinguished by type (rather than mass), depending on how fast they’re spinning. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-10-method-analyse-densest-star-universe.html…
Tag: neutron star mergers
Astronomers ponder Odd Radio Circles in space
Scientists in Australia have discovered a strange new phenomenon in deep space – “Odd Radio Circles” – that appear in radio telescope images as mysterious circles or rings. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/astronomers-ponder-odd-radio-circles-in-space…
Stellar heavy metals can trace history of galaxies
Astronomers have cataloged signs of nine heavy metals in the infrared light from supergiant and giant stars. New observations based on this catalog will help researchers to understand how events like binary neutron star mergers have affected the chemical composition and evolution of our own Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-stellar-heavy-metals-history-galaxies.html…
First identification of a heavy element born from neutron star collision
For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and is published today in Nature. The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the Universe can form in neutron star mergers,…
Automated observing network inaugurated at SOAR telescope
Supernovae, neutron star mergers, black holes at the center of galaxies, erupting young stars—these are all examples of objects in the night sky that change their brightness over time. In the coming years, astronomers expect to discover millions of these variable astronomical events with new sensitive telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). But to characterize these objects and to…