Thursday, August 28, 2025

Cosmic butterfly reveals clues to Earth's creation

This image, which combines infrared data from the James Webb Space Telescope with submillimetre observations from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), shows the doughnut-shaped torus and interconnected bubbles of dusty gas that surround the Butterfly Nebula’s central star. The torus is oriented vertically and nearly edge-on from our perspective, and it intersects with bubbles of gas enclosing the star. The bubbles appear bright red in this image, illuminated by the light from helium and neon gas. Outside the bubbles, jets traced by emission from ionised iron shoot off in opposite directions. vCredit ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Hirano, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Clues about how worlds like Earth may have formed have been found buried at the heart of a spectacular 'cosmic butterfly'.

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, researchers say they have made a big leap forward in our understanding of how the raw material of rocky planets comes together.

This cosmic dust – tiny particles of minerals and organic material which include ingredients linked to the origins of life – was studied at the core of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, which is located about 3,400 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.

From the dense, dusty torus that surrounds the star hidden at the centre of the nebula to its outflowing jets, the Webb observations reveal many new discoveries that paint a never-before-seen portrait of a dynamic and structured planetary nebula.

They have been published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Most cosmic dust has an amorphous, or randomly oriented-atomic structure, like soot. But some of it forms beautiful, crystalline shapes, more like tiny gemstones.

"For years, scientists have debated how cosmic dust forms in space. But now, with the help of the powerful James Webb Space Telescope, we may finally have a clearer picture," said lead researcher Dr Mikako Matsuura, of Cardiff University.

"We were able to see both cool gemstones formed in calm, long-lasting zones and fiery grime created in violent, fast-moving parts of space, all within a single object.

"This discovery is a big step forward in understanding how the basic materials of planets, come together."

This image set showcases three views of the Butterfly Nebula, featuring an optical and near-infrared view from Hubble (left and middle) and the latest Webb/ALMA image. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, J. Kastner, K. Noll, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Hirano, J. Kastner, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

The Butterfly Nebula's central star is one of the hottest known central stars in a planetary nebula in our galaxy, with a temperature of 220,000 Kelvin.

This blazing stellar engine is responsible for the nebula's gorgeous glow, but its full power may be channelled by the dense band of dusty gas that surrounds it: the torus.

The new Webb data show that the torus is composed of crystalline silicates like quartz as well as irregularly shaped dust grains. The dust grains have sizes on the order of a millionth of a metre — large, as far as cosmic dust is considered — indicating that they have been growing for a long time.

Outside the torus, the emission from different atoms and molecules takes on a multilayered structure. The ions that require the largest amount of energy to form are concentrated close to the centre, while those that require less energy are found farther from the central star.

Iron and nickel are particularly interesting, tracing a pair of jets that blast outward from the star in opposite directions.

Intriguingly, the team also spotted light emitted by carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. They form flat, ring-like structures, much like the honeycomb shapes found in beehives.

On Earth, we often find PAHs in smoke from campfires, car exhaust, or burnt toast.

Given the location of the PAHs, the research team suspects that these molecules form when a 'bubble' of wind from the central star bursts into the gas that surrounds it.

This may be the first-ever evidence of PAHs forming in a oxygen-rich planetary nebula, providing an important glimpse into the details of how these molecules form.

This annotated image takes the viewer on a deep dive into the heart of the Butterfly Nebula, NGC 6302, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), N. Hirano, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

NGC 6302 is one of the best-studied planetary nebulae in our galaxy and was previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Planetary nebulae are among the most beautiful and most elusive creatures in the cosmic zoo. These nebulae form when stars with masses between about 0.8 and 8 times the mass of the Sun shed most of their mass at the end of their lives. The planetary nebula phase is fleeting, lasting only about 20,000 years.

Contrary to the name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets: the naming confusion began several hundred years ago, when astronomers reported that these nebulae appeared round, like planets.

The name stuck, even though many planetary nebulae aren't round at all — and the Butterfly Nebula is a prime example of the fantastic shapes that these nebulae can take.

The Butterfly Nebula is a bipolar nebula, meaning that it has two lobes that spread in opposite directions, forming the 'wings' of the butterfly. A dark band of dusty gas poses as the butterfly's 'body'.

This band is actually a doughnut-shaped torus that's being viewed from the side, hiding the nebula's central star — the ancient core of a Sun-like star that energises the nebula and causes it to glow. The dusty doughnut may be responsible for the nebula's insectoid shape by preventing gas from flowing outward from the star equally in all directions.

The new Webb image zooms in on the centre of the Butterfly Nebula and its dusty torus, providing an unprecedented view of its complex structure. The image uses data from Webb's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) working in integral field unit mode.

This mode combines a camera and a spectrograph to take images at many different wavelengths simultaneously, revealing how an object’s appearance changes with wavelength. The research team supplemented the Webb observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array, a powerful network of radio dishes.

Researchers analysing these Webb data identified nearly 200 spectral lines, each of which holds information about the atoms and molecules in the nebula. These lines reveal nested and interconnected structures traced by different chemical species.

The research team were able to pinpoint the location of the Butterfly Nebula's central star, which heats a previously undetected dust cloud around it, making the latter shine brightly at the mid-infrared wavelengths that MIRI is sensitive to.

The location of the nebula's central star has remained elusive until now, because this enshrouding dust renders it invisible at optical wavelengths. Previous searches for the star lacked the combination of infrared sensitivity and resolution necessary to spot its obscuring warm dust cloud.




Media contacts

Sam Tonkin
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700

press@ras.ac.uk

Science contacts:

Dr Mikako Matsuura
Cardiff University

matsuuram@cardiff.ac.uk



Further information

The paper 'The JWST/MIRI view of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 I.: a UV irradiated torus and a hot bubble triggering PAH formation' by Mikako Matsuura et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1194.

About the James Webb Space Telescope

Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international collaboration agreement, ESA provided the telescope’s launch service, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. Working with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 adaptations for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.

Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).




Notes for editors

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on
Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Submitted by Sam Tonkin


Fresh twist to mystery of Jupiter's core

A high-resolution simulation of a planet colliding with Jupiter, used to study whether this process could be responsible for forming the planet's dilute core. The impact generates striking shock waves and stirs material in Jupiter's interior through turbulent mixing. However, the core material rapidly re-settles, and no dilute core is produced in the simulations. Credit: Jacob Kegerries/Thomas Sandnes

The mystery at Jupiter's heart has taken a fresh twist – as new research suggests a giant impact may not have been responsible for the formation of its core.

It had been thought that a colossal collision with an early planet containing half of Jupiter's core material could have mixed up the central region of the gas giant, enough to explain its interior today.

But a new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests its make-up is actually down to how the growing planet absorbed heavy and light materials as it formed and evolved.

Unlike what scientists once expected, the core of the largest planet in our solar system doesn't have a sharp boundary but instead gradually blends into the surrounding layers of mostly hydrogen – a structure known as a dilute core.

How this dilute core formed has been a key question among scientists and astronomers ever since NASA's Juno spacecraft first revealed its existence.

Tn impacting planet collides with Jupiter's core in the simulations, triggering shock waves and turbulent mixing. Credit: Thomas Sandnes/Durham University
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Using cutting-edge supercomputer simulations of planetary impacts, with a new method to improve the simulation's treatment of mixing between materials, researchers from Durham University, in collaboration with scientists from NASA, SETI, and CENSSS, University of Oslo, tested whether a massive collision could have created Jupiter's dilute core.

The simulations were run on the DiRAC COSMA supercomputer hosted at Durham University using the state-of-the-art SWIFT open-source software.

The study found that a stable dilute core structure was not produced in any of the simulations conducted, even in those involving impacts under extreme conditions.

Instead, the simulations demonstrate that the dense rock and ice core material displaced by an impact would quickly re-settle, leaving a distinct boundary with the outer layers of hydrogen and helium, rather than forming a smooth transition zone between the two regions.

Reflecting on the findings, lead author of the study Dr Thomas Sandnes, of Durham University, said: "It's fascinating to explore how a giant planet like Jupiter would respond to one of the most violent events a growing planet can experience.

"We see in our simulations that this kind of impact literally shakes the planet to its core – just not in the right way to explain the interior of Jupiter that we see today

This image from the simulations shows how the collision of the impactor with Jupiter's core produces striking patterns of fluid instabilities as materials mix. Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Thomas Sandnes/Durham University
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

The core material rapidly re-settles in the simulations to form a core with a sharp boundary. Credit: Jacob Kegerreis/Thomas Sandnes/Durham University
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Jupiter isn't the only planet with a dilute core, as scientists have recently found evidence that Saturn has one too.

Dr Luis Teodoro, of the University of Oslo, said: "The fact that Saturn also has a dilute core strengthens the idea that these structures are not the result of rare, extremely high-energy impacts but instead form gradually during the long process of planetary growth and evolution."

The findings of this study could also help inform scientists' understanding and interpretation of the many Jupiter- and Saturn-sized exoplanets that have been observed around distant stars. If dilute cores aren't made by rare and extreme impacts, then perhaps most or all of these planets have comparably complex interiors.

Co-author of the study Dr Jacob Kegerreis said: "Giant impacts are a key part of many planets' histories, but they can't explain everything!

"This project also accelerated another step in our development of new ways to simulate these cataclysmic events in ever greater detail, helping us to continue narrowing down how the amazing diversity of worlds we see in the Solar System and beyond came to be."




Media contacts:

Sam Tonkin
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700

press@ras.ac.uk

Science contacts:

Dr Thomas Sandnes
Durham University

thomas.d.sandnes@durham.ac.uk



Further information

The paper ‘No dilute core produced in simulations of giant impacts on to Jupiter’ by T. D. Sandnes, V. R. Eke, J. A. Kegerreis, R. J. Massey and L. F. A. Teodoro, has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1105.



Notes for editors

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

About Durham University

Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research based in historic Durham City in the UK.

We are a collegiate university committed to inspiring our people to do outstanding things at Durham and in the world.

We conduct research that improves lives globally and we are ranked as a world top 100 university with an international reputation in research and education (QS World University overwritten to this Rankings 2025).

We are a member of the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities and we are consistently ranked as a top 10 university in national league tables (Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide, Guardian University Guide and The Complete University Guide).

For more information about Durham University visit:
www.durham.ac.uk/about/

Submitted by Sam Tonkin


Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Braided Magnetic Flux Ropes Are Found at Both Human and Light Year Scales

Four braided structures. (a) astrophysical jet M-87, 3000 light years long; (b) Double Helix Nebula, 70 light years long; (c) solar prominence, 3000 kilometers long; (d) solar loop manufactured in Bellan lab at Caltech, 3 centimeters long. Credit: (a) Passeto et al., Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF; (b) NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Morris (UCLA); (c) High Altitude Observatory Archives; (d) Yang Zhang, Caltech Bellan Plasma Lab

Four braided structures. (a) astrophysical jet M-87, 3000 light years long; (b) Double Helix Nebula, 70 light years long; (c) solar prominence, 3000 kilometers long; (d) solar loop manufactured in Bellan lab at Caltech, 3 centimeters long. Credit: (a) Passeto et al., Sophia Dagnello, NRAO/AUI/NSF; (b) NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Morris (UCLA); (c) High Altitude Observatory Archives; (d) Yang Zhang, Caltech Bellan Plasma Lab



Investigating solar corona structures has led Paul Bellan, Caltech professor of applied physics, and his former graduate student Yang Zhang (PhD '24) to discover a new equilibrium state of the magnetic field and its associated plasma. The solar corona, the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, is much less dense than the Sun's surface but is a million times hotter. The corona is composed of strong magnetic fields confining plasma, a gaseous soup of charged particles (electrons and ions). The new equilibrium, called a double helix, applies not only to the solar corona but also to much larger astrophysical configurations such as the Double Helix Nebula located near the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Solar corona structures such as flares often have the form of magnetic flux ropes: twisted tubes of plasma-containing magnetic fields. Such a rope can be visualized as a plasma-filled garden hose with a stripe wrapped around it in a helical pattern. An electric current flows along the length of the hose, and the helical stripe corresponds to the twisted magnetic field. Because it is charged, plasma conducts electric currents and is attached, or "frozen," into magnetic fields.

Magnetic flux ropes occur in a variety of situations ranging from the human scale—say, a laboratory experiment—to the absolutely huge: solar flares that are few hundred thousand kilometers long. Astrophysical structures with magnetic flux ropes can also span hundreds or even thousands of light-years.

In a large laboratory vacuum chamber, Bellan and Zhang (now a NASA Jack Eddy postdoctoral fellow at Princeton) produced solar flare replicas measuring between 10 and 50 centimeters long. "We have two electrodes inside the vacuum chamber, which has coils producing a magnetic field spanning the electrodes. Then we apply high voltage across the electrodes to ionize initially neutral gas to form a plasma," Yang explains. "The resulting magnetized plasma configuration automatically forms a braided structure."

This braided structure consists of two flux ropes that wrap around one another to form a double helix structure. In the experiments, this double helix was observed to be in a stable equilibrium—in other words, it holds its structure without tending to twist tighter or untwist. In a new paper, Zhang and Bellan demonstrate that the stable equilibrium of these double-helix flux ropes can be understood, analyzed, and predicted accurately in mathematical terms.

Though the properties of single flux ropes are well known, braided flux ropes were not well understood—especially those configurations in which the electric currents flow in the same direction along both of the braided strands. Scientists have modeled the other possible situation—where currents flow in one direction in one flux rope and in the opposite direction in the other—but this scenario is thought to be unlikely in nature.

The same-current configuration is especially important because it would be susceptible to kinking and expansion driven by hoop forces—phenomena observed both in braided solar structures and in laboratory experiments. Such kinking and expansion should not occur when current flows in opposite directions in the braided strands (a "no-net-current" state).

Previously, scientists assumed that braided flux ropes where the strands have current flowing in the same direction would always merge, because parallel currents magnetically attract each another. However, in 2010, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory found that such flux ropes instead bounce off one another as they come closer together.

"There was clearly something more complicated going on when the flux ropes are braided, and now we have shown what that is," Bellan says. "If you have electrical currents flowing along two helical wires that wrap around each other to form a braided structure, as seen in our lab, the components of the two currents flowing along the length of the two wires are parallel and attract, but the components of the two currents flowing in the wrapping direction are anti-parallel and repel. This combination of both attractive and repulsive forces means there will be a critical helical angle at which these opposing forces balance, producing an equilibrium. If the helical flux ropes twist tighter, there will be too much magnetic repulsion; if they twist more loosely, there will be too much magnetic attraction. At the critical angle of twist, the helical structure arrives at its lowest energy state, or equilibrium."

The next task was to create a mathematical model of this behavior—something not previously done. Using what Bellan describes as "brute force mathematics," Zhang created a set of equations that could apply to multiple flux tubes in various configurations, including braided ropes, and showed there is indeed a state at which the attractive and repulsive forces balance each other, creating an equilibrium. "And as an unexpected bonus, Yang can calculate the magnetic fields inside and outside the flux ropes, and the current and pressure inside them," Bellan says, "giving us a full picture of the behavior of these braided structures."

Zhang tested his mathematical model against the Double Helix Nebula, an astrophysical plasma formation located 25,000 light-years from Earth that covers a 70 light-year swath of space, to see if the equations could describe a large model as well as it did the structures he and Bellan created in the lab. "What was rather amazing about this calculation is that Yang didn't really need to know much about the nebula," Bellan says. "Just knowing the diameter of the strands and the periodicity of the twist, numbers that can be observed astronomically, Yang was able to predict the angle of twist that yielded an equilibrium structure, and that was consistent with observations of this nebula. One of the most exciting aspects of this research is that magnetohydrodynamics, the theory of magnetized plasmas, turns out to be fantastically scalable. When I first started looking into this, I thought the phenomena of magnetic structures at different scales were qualitatively similar, but because their sizes are so different, they couldn't be described by the same equations. It turns out that this is not so. What we see in lab experiments and in solar and astrophysical observations are governed by the same equations."

The paper, titled "Magnetic Double Helix," was published in Physical Review Letters. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Source: Caltech/News



Contact:

Caltech Media Relations

mr@caltech.edu


Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Taking a third look

A spiral galaxy, tilted nearly face-on to us, with a slightly unusual shape. Its spiral arms form an oval-shaped ring around the galaxy’s disc, filled with blue light from stars, as well as pink glowing gas bubbles where new stars are forming. Threads of dark red dust swirl around the brightly glowing core, blocking some of its light. The dust lanes extend into and follow the spiral arms. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, F. Belfiore, D. Calzetti

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week features a galaxy whose asymmetric appearance may be the result of a galactic tug of war.Located 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo, the spiral galaxy Messier 96 is the brightest of the galaxies in its group. The gravitational pull of its galactic neighbours may be responsible for Messier 96’s uneven distribution of gas and dust, asymmetric spiral arms, and off-centre galactic core.

This asymmetric appearance is on full display in a new Hubble image, which incorporates observations made in ultraviolet and optical light. Hubble images of Messier 96 have been released previously in 2015 and 2018. Each successive image has added new data, building up a beautiful and scientifically valuable view of the galaxy.

This third version gives an entirely new perspective on Messier 96’s star formation. The bubbles of pink gas in this image surround hot, young, massive stars, illuminating a ring of star formation in the outskirts of the galaxy. These young stars are still embedded within the clouds of gas from which they were born. The new data included for the first time in this image will be used to study how stars are born within giant dusty gas clouds, how dust filters starlight, and how stars affect their environments.



Monday, August 25, 2025

X-ray, Radio Go 'Hand in Hand' in New NASA Image

X-ray, Radio, and H-alpha Images of MSH 15-52
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Hong Kong/S. Zhang et al.; Radio: ATNF/CSIRO/ATCA; H-alpha: UK STFC/Royal Observatory Edinburgh; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk




In 2009, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory released a captivating image: a pulsar and its surrounding nebula that is shaped like a hand.

Since then, astronomers have used Chandra and other telescopes to continue to observe this object. Now, new radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), has been combined with Chandra’s X-ray data to provide a fresh view of this exploded star and its environment, to help understand its peculiar properties and shape.

At the center of this new image lies the pulsar B1509-58, a rapidly spinning neutron star that is only about 12 miles in diameter. This tiny object is responsible for producing an intricate nebula (called MSH 15-52) that spans over 150 light-years, or about 900 trillion miles. The nebula, which is produced by energetic particles, resembles a human hand with a palm and extended fingers pointing to the upper right in X-rays.

Labeled Version of the Image
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Hong Kong/S. Zhang et al.; Radio: ATNF/CSIRO/ATCA; H-alpha: UK STFC/Royal Observatory Edinburgh; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

The collapse of a massive star created the pulsar when much of the star crashed inward once it burned through its sustainable nuclear fuel. An ensuing explosion sent the star’s outer layers outward into space as a supernova.

The pulsar spins around almost seven times every second and has a strong magnetic field, about 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth’s. The rapid rotation and strong magnetic field make B1509-58 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the Galaxy, enabling it to drive an energetic wind of electrons and other particles away from the pulsar, creating the nebula.

In this new composite image, the ATCA radio data (represented in red) has been combined with X-rays from Chandra (shown in blue, orange and yellow), along with an optical image of hydrogen gas (gold). The areas of overlap between the X-ray and radio data in MSH 15-52 show as purple. The optical image shows stars in the field of view along with parts of the supernova’s debris, the supernova remnant RCW 89. A labeled version of the figure shows the main features of the image.

Radio data from ATCA now reveals complex filaments that are aligned with the directions of the nebula’s magnetic field, shown by the short, straight, white lines in a supplementary image. These filaments could result from the collision of the pulsar’s particle wind with the supernova’s debris.

Complex Filaments Aligned with the Directions of the Nebula’s Magnetic Field
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Hong Kong/S. Zhang et al.; Radio: ATNF/CSIRO/ATCA; H-alpha: UK STFC/Royal Observatory Edinburgh; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

By comparing the radio and X-ray data, researchers identified key differences between the sources of the two types of light. In particular, some prominent X-ray features, including the jet towards the bottom of the image and the inner parts of the three “fingers” towards the top, are not detected in radio waves. This suggests that highly energetic particles are leaking out from a shock wave — similar to a supersonic plane’s sonic boom — near the pulsar and moving along magnetic field lines to create the fingers.

The radio data also shows that RCW 89’s structure is different from typical young supernova remnants. Much of the radio emission is patchy and closely matches clumps of X-ray and optical emission. It also extends well beyond the X-ray emission. All of these characteristics support the idea that RCW 89 is colliding with a dense cloud of nearby hydrogen gas.

However, the researchers do not fully understand all that the data is showing them. One area that is perplexing is the sharp boundary of X-ray emission in the upper right of the image that seems to be the blast wave from the supernova — see the labeled feature. Supernova blast waves are usually bright in radio waves for young supernova remnants like RCW 89, so it is surprising to researchers that there is no radio signal at the X-ray boundary.

MSH 15–52 and RCW 89 show many unique features not found in other young sources. There are, however, still many open questions regarding the formation and evolution of these structures. Further work is needed to provide better understanding of the complex interplay between the pulsar wind and the supernova debris.

A paper describing this work, led by Shumeng Zhang of the University of Hong Kong, with co-authors Stephen C.Y. Ng of the University of Hong Kong and Niccolo' Bucciantini of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, has been published in The Astrophysical Journal and is available at https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf333.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Chandra X-ray Center controls science operations from Cambridge, Massachusetts, and flight operations from Burlington, Massachusetts.





Visual Description:

This release features a composite image of a nebula and pulsar that strongly resembles a cosmic hand reaching for a neon red cloud. The neon red cloud sits near the top of the image, just to our right of center. Breaks in the cloud reveal interwoven strands of gold resembling spiderwebs, or a latticework substructure. This cloud is the remains of the supernova that formed the pulsar at the heart of the image. The pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star only 12 miles in diameter, is far too small to be seen in this image, which represents a region of space over 150 light-years across.

The bottom half of the image is dominated by a massive blue hand reaching up toward the pulsar and supernova cloud. This is an intricate nebula called MSH 15-52, an energetic wind of electrons and other particles driven away from the pulsar. The resemblance to a hand is undeniable. Inside the nebula, streaks and swirls of blue range from pale to navy, evoking a medical X-ray, or the yearning hand of a giant, cosmic ghost.

The hand and nebula are set against the blackness of space, surrounded by scores of gleaming golden specks. At our lower left, a golden hydrogen gas cloud extends beyond the edges of the image. In this composite, gold represents optical data; red represents ATCA radio data; and blue, orange, and yellow represent X-ray data from Chandra. Where the blue hand of the nebula overlaps with the radio data in red, the fingers appear hazy and purple.



Fast Facts for MSH 15-52:

Scale: Image is about 22 arcmin (110 light-years) across.
Category: Supernovas & Supernova Remnants, Neutron Stars/X-ray Binaries
Coordinates (J2000): RA 15h 13m 55.5s | Dec -59° 8´ 8.8"
Constellation: Circinus
Observation Dates: 20 observations from Aug 14, 2000 to Sep 23, 2022
Observation Time: 185 hours (7 days 17 hours)
Obs. ID: 754, 3833, 3834, 4384, 5515, 5534, 5535, 6116, 6117, 5562, 9138, 14805, 18023, 19299, 19300, 20910, 20932, 20933, 23540, 27448
Instrument: ACIS
References: Zhang, S., Ng, C.-Y., and Bucciantini, N., 2025, ApJ, accepted. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/adf333
Color Code: X-ray: red, green, blue; Radio: red; H-alpha: orange
Distance Estimate: About 17,000 light-years


Sunday, August 24, 2025

Brightest Ever Fast Radio Burst Allows Researchers To Identify Its Origin

Artist’s rendition of CHIME/FRB and its Outriggers localizing FRB 20250316A (RBFLOAT.) Inset: The host galaxy (NGC 4141) as imaged by the MMT Observatory (PI: Yuxin (Vic) Dong), illustrates the location of the FRB within a spiral arm of NGC 4141. Credit: Daniëlle Futselaar/MMT Observatory


Astronomers use newly deployed telescopes and deep-space imaging to challenge long-held assumptions about what causes these mysterious cosmic signals

An international team of astronomers have observed one of the brightest fast radio bursts (FRBs) ever detected—and pinpointed its location in a nearby galaxy (NGC 4141). FRB 20250316A has been nicknamed RBFLOAT, which stands for Radio Brightest FLash Of All Time. The finding and the discovery of the location surprised the team and revealed new insight into FRBs, which are one of astrophysics’ biggest mysteries.

FRBs are powerful, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves from space. Researchers suspect that they are the result of extreme cosmic events but have, so far, been unable to determine their exact origin. FRBs are notoriously difficult to study because they vanish in the blink of an eye.

This discovery was made using the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME), one of the premier instruments used to study FRBs, along with data from NASA’s JWST. One of CHIME’s telescopes (also called outriggers) is located in the National Radio Quiet Zone on the campus of the U.S. National Science Foundation Green Bank Observatory. This outrigger is one of several CHIME telescopes distributed across North America, which also includes locations in British Columbia and California, designed to work together for very long baseline interferometry (VLBI). A co-author on the paper, Fengqiu Adam Dong, is a Jansky Fellow based at the NSF Green Bank Observatory.

The Green Bank Outrigger, combined with the rest of the array, allowed researchers to triangulate RBFLOAT’s position with extremely high spatial resolution, down to tens of milliarcseconds, which corresponds to approximately 13 parsecs (or 45 light-years) at the FRB’s distance.

Read More

This news was adapted from press releases from several institutions involved with this research, including McGill University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.



Saturday, August 23, 2025

NuSTAR Observes a Millisecond Pulsar

An artist's impression of an accreting millisecond pulsar, showing a neutron star accreting matter from a companion star, which speeds it up to a spin period of a fraction of a second. As it rotates, the orientation of its magnetic field spins in and out of the line of sight, causing us to observe pulsations. Image credit: NASA/D. Berry.
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Over the past week, NuSTAR observed the bright Galactic binary SAX J1808.4-3658 as part of an approved joint XMM-Newton and NuSTAR Target-of-Opportunity (ToO) program. SAX J1808 was the first ever discovered accreting millisecond pulsar and has been dormant for around three years before it recently increased in brightness again in a dramatic fashion, when the source was observed by Einstein Probe to have an X-ray flux exceeding the XMM/NuSTAR trigger threshold by more than a factor of 1000. The team has also triggered a 10-day-long ToO observation with IXPE, as well as requesting Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) ToO observations with XRISM, to explore the polarization and high-resolution spectral properties of the source. NuSTAR observations close to the start of IXPE observations will maximize the scientific return, probing the broadband outburst spectra beyond the IXPE, Einstein Probe, and XRISM bands to search for reflection features from the accretion disk as the outburst of this source proceeeds.

Authors: Daniel Stern (NuSTAR Deputy PI)



Friday, August 22, 2025

Noteworthy nearby spiral

A spiral galaxy seen face-on. Its centre is a bright glowing yellow. The galaxy’s spiral arms contain sparkling blue stars, pink spots of star formation, and dark threads of dust that follow the arms. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team

Today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope Picture of the Week offers a closeup of a nearby spiral galaxy. The subject is NGC 2835, which lies 35 million light-years away in the constellation Hydra (The Water Snake).

A previous Hubble image of this galaxy was released in 2020, and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope turned its gaze toward NGC 2835 in recent years as well. Do you see anything different between today’s image of NGC 2835 and the previously released versions? Overall, NGC 2835 looks quite similar in all of these images, with spiral arms dotted with young blue stars sweeping around an oval-shaped centre, where older stars reside.

This image differs from previously released images because it incorporates new data from Hubble that captures a specific wavelength of red light called H-alpha. The regions that are bright in H-alpha emission can be seen along NGC 2835’s spiral arms, where dozens of bright pink nebulae appear like flowers in bloom. Astronomers are interested in H-alpha light because it signals the presence of several different types of nebulae that arise during different stages of a star’s life. Newborn massive stars create nebulae called H II regions that are particularly brilliant sources of H-alpha light, while dying stars can leave behind supernova remnants or planetary nebulae that can also be identified by their H-alpha emission.

By using Hubble’s sensitive instruments to survey 19 nearby galaxies, researchers aim to identify more than 50 000 nebulae. These observations will help to explain how stars affect their birth neighbourhoods through intense starlight and winds.



Thursday, August 21, 2025

Examining Earendel: Is the Most Distant Lensed Star Actually a Cluster?

WST image of the galaxy cluster WHL0137-08 (left) and a beautifully lensed high-redshift galaxy called the Sunrise Arc (right). A label indicates the location of Earendel, a source that has been interpreted as the most distant lensed single star.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Coe (STScI/AURA for ESA; Johns Hopkins University), B. Welch (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; University of Maryland, College Park). Image processing: Z. Levay


Record-Breaking Discovery

In 2022, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope reported the discovery of the most distant single star candidate ever seen, now pinpointed to have a redshift of z = 5.926. The star, named Earendel, is an incredible beacon from the first billion years of the universe, standing out brilliantly from the red smear of its host galaxy, the Sunrise Arc.

But there’s a catch — at the distances involved, distinguishing between one star and many isn’t easy, and Earendel might not actually be just one star. New research uses stellar population modeling to explore the possibility that what has been touted as a single star is really a cluster.

JWST spectra of Earendel (top) and 1b (bottom), along with the best-fitting models
Credit:Pascale et al. 2025

The Light of Earendel, Our Most Beloved Star… Cluster?

The question sounds simple: does the light from Earendel resemble that of one star, or does it more closely align with the emission from a collection of many stars? What complicates matters is that Earendel’s light has been warped and magnified by an intervening galaxy cluster in a process called gravitational lensing. Because the degree of magnification isn’t known precisely, it’s not clear exactly how large the source is — leaving wiggle room for Earendel to be one or many stars.

To investigate Earendel’s identity, Massimo Pascale (University of California, Berkeley) and collaborators fit a simple stellar population model to JWST Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) spectra of both Earendel and another source in the Sunrise Arc called 1b, which is widely accepted to be a star cluster. The model varied the age of the cluster, its metallicity, the amount of dust it contains, and other factors. To make the modeling more rigorous, the team also used three different stellar population model libraries.

Both Earendel and 1b were well fit by all three stellar population models, supporting the hypothesis that Earendel is a cluster. Earendel and 1b share certain similarities, such as metallicity (less than 10% of the Sun’s), stellar surface density (high, rivaling the maximum density seen in the local universe), and age (more than 30 million years old).

Metallicity and formation age of star clusters in the local universe, in the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, and at high redshifts. Credit: Pascale et al. 2025

Given the potential ages and metallicities of the two sources, it’s possible that both Earendel and 1b are the precursors to today’s globular clusters. These clusters may fit into an evolutionary sequence that connects other lensed star clusters, such as the redshift z = 10.2 Cosmic Gems clusters and the z = 1.4 Sparkler clusters.

While this work demonstrates that Earendel could be a cluster, it doesn’t prove that it is. Doing so is challenging, especially since certain features predicted to exist for a single star might be beyond our observational capabilities, or they could be reproduced by clusters with certain properties. The authors pointed to one smoking-gun signal for Earendel being a single, massive star: brightness fluctuations due to microlensing by stellar winds. So far, no such variability has been found, and the cluster hypothesis remains viable.

By Kerry Hensley

Citation

“Is Earendel a Star Cluster?: Metal-Poor Globular Cluster Progenitors at z ∼ 6,” Massimo Pascale et al 2025 ApJL 988 L76. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aded93



Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Rare quadruple star system could unlock mystery of brown dwarfs

An artist's impression of the UPM J1040−3551 system against the backdrop of the Milky Way as observed by Gaia. On the left, UPM J1040−3551 Aa & Ab appears as a distant bright orange dot, with an inset revealing these two M-type stars in orbit. On the right, in the foreground, a pair of cold brown dwarfs – UPM J1040−3551 Ba & Bb – orbit each other for a period of decades while collectively circling UPM J1040−3551 Aab in a vast orbit that takes over 100,000 years to complete. Credit: Jiaxin Zhong/Zenghua Zhang
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

The "exciting" discovery of an extremely rare quadruple star system could significantly advance our understanding of brown dwarfs, astronomers say.

These mysterious objects are too big to be considered a planet but also too small to be a star because they lack the mass to keep fusing atoms and blossom into fully-fledged suns.

In a new breakthrough published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), astronomers have now identified an extremely rare hierarchical quadruple star system consisting of a pair of cold brown dwarfs orbiting a pair of young red dwarf stars, located 82 light-years from Earth in the constellation Antlia.

The system, named UPM J1040−3551 AabBab, was identified by an international research team led by Professor Zenghua Zhang, of Nanjing University.

The researchers made their discovery using common angular velocity measured by the European Space Agency’s Gaia astrometric satellite and NASA\s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), followed by comprehensive spectroscopic observations and analysis.

That’s because this wide binary pair need more than 100,000 years to complete one orbit around each other, so their orbital motion cannot be seen in years. Researchers therefore had to analyse how they are moving towards the same direction with the same angular velocity.

In this system, Aab refers to the brighter stellar pair Aa and Ab, while Bab refers to the fainter substellar pair Ba and Bb.

"What makes this discovery particularly exciting is the hierarchical nature of the system, which is required for its orbit to remain stable over a long time period," said Professor Zhang.

"These two pairs of objects are orbiting each other separately for periods of decades, while the pairs are also orbiting a common centre of mass over a period of more than 100,000 years."

The two pairs are separated by 1,656 astronomical units (au), where 1 au equals the Earth-Sun distance. The brighter pair, UPM J1040−3551 Aab, consists of two nearly equal-mass red dwarf stars, which appear orange in colour when observed in visible wavelengths.

With a visual magnitude of 14.6, this pair is approximately 100,000 times fainter than Polaris (the North Star) in visible wavelengths. In fact, no red dwarf star is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye – not even Proxima Centauri, our closest stellar neighbour at 4.2 light-years away. To make UPM J1040−3551 Aab visible without optical aid, this binary pair would need to be brought to within 1.5 light-years of Earth, placing it closer than any star in our current cosmic neighbourhood.

The fainter pair, UPM J1040−3551 Bab, comprises two much cooler brown dwarfs that emit virtually no visible light and appear roughly 1,000 times dimmer than the Aab pair when observed in near-infrared wavelengths, where they are most easily detected.

The close binary nature of UPM J1040−3551 Aab was initially suspected due to its wobbling photocentre during Gaia's observations and confirmed by its unusual brightness – approximately 0.7 magnitude brighter than a single star with the same temperature at the same distance, as the combined light from the nearly equal-mass pair effectively doubles the output.

Similarly, UPM J1040−3551 Bab was identified as another close binary through its abnormally bright infrared measurements compared to typical brown dwarfs of its spectral type. Spectral fitting analysis strongly supported this conclusion, with binary templates providing a significantly better match than single-object templates.

Dr Felipe Navarete, of the Brazilian National Astrophysics Laboratory, led the critical spectroscopic observations that helped characterise the system components.

Using the Goodman spectrograph on the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, Dr Navarete obtained optical spectra of the brighter pair, while also capturing near-infrared spectra of the fainter pair with SOAR's TripleSpec instrument.

"These observations were challenging due to the faintness of the brown dwarfs," said Dr Navarete, "but the capabilities of SOAR allowed us to collect the crucial spectroscopic data needed to understand the nature of these objects."

Their analysis revealed that both components of the brighter pair are M-type red dwarfs with temperatures of approximately 3,200 Kelvin (about 2,900°C) and masses of about 17 per cent that of the Sun.

The fainter pair are more exotic objects: two T-type brown dwarfs with temperatures of 820 Kelvin (550°C) and 690 Kelvin (420°C), respectively.

Brown dwarfs are small and dense low-mass objects, with the brown dwarfs in this system having sizes similar to the planet Jupiter but masses estimated to be 10-30 times greater. Indeed, at the low end of this range these objects could be considered "planetary mass" objects.

"This is the first quadruple system ever discovered with a pair of T-type brown dwarfs orbiting two stars," said Dr MariCruz Gálvez-Ortiz of the Center for Astrobiology in Spain, a co-author of the research paper.

"The discovery provides a unique cosmic laboratory for studying these mysterious objects."

Unlike stars, brown dwarfs continuously cool throughout their lifetime, which changes their observable properties such as temperature, luminosity, and spectral features.

This cooling process creates a fundamental challenge in brown dwarf research known as the "age-mass degeneracy problem".

An isolated brown dwarf with a certain temperature could be a younger, less massive object or an older, more massive one – astronomers cannot distinguish between these possibilities without additional information.

"Brown dwarfs with wide stellar companions whose ages can be determined independently are invaluable at breaking this degeneracy as age benchmarks," explained Professor Hugh Jones, of the University of Hertfordshire, a co-author of the research paper.

"UPM J1040−3551 is particularly valuable because H-alpha emission from the brighter pair indicates the system is relatively young, between 300 million and 2 billion years old."

The team believes the brown dwarf pair (UPM J1040−3551 Bab) could potentially be resolved with high-resolution imaging techniques in the future, enabling precise measurements of their orbital motion and dynamical masses.

"This system offers a dual benefit for brown dwarf science," said co-researcher Professor Adam Burgasser, of the University of California San Diego.

"It can serve as an age benchmark to calibrate low-temperature atmosphere models, and as a mass benchmark to test evolutionary models if we can resolve the brown dwarf binary and track its orbit."

The discovery of the UPM J1040−3551 system represents a significant advancement in he understanding of these elusive objects and the diverse formation paths for stellar systems in the neighbourhood of the Sun.




Media contacts:

Sam Tonkin (Submitted by)
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700

press@ras.ac.uk

Science contacts:

Professor Zenghua Zhang
Nanjing University

zz@nju.edu.cn



Further information

The paper ‘Benchmark brown dwarfs – I. A blue M2 + T5 wide binary and a probable young M4 + [T7 + T8] hierarchical triple’ by Zenghua, Zhang et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI:10.1093/mnras/staf895.



Notes for editors

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on
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'Most massive black hole ever discovered' is detected

The Cosmic Horseshoe gravitational lens. The newly discovered ultramassive blackhole lies at the centre of the orange galaxy. Far behind it is a blue galaxy that is being warped into the horseshoe shaped ring by distortions in spacetime created by the immense mass of the foreground orange galaxy. Credit:NASA/ESA
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

Astronomers have discovered potentially the most massive black hole ever detected.

The cosmic behemoth is close to the theoretical upper limit of what is possible in the universe and is 10,000 times heavier than the black hole at the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy.

It exists in one of the most massive galaxies ever observed – the Cosmic Horseshoe – which is so big it distorts spacetime and warps the passing light of a background galaxy into a giant horseshoe-shaped Einstein ring.

Such is the enormousness of the ultramassive black hole, it equates to 36 billion solar masses, according to a new paper published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

It is thought that every galaxy in the universe has a supermassive black hole at its centre and that bigger galaxies host bigger ones, known as ultramassive black holes.

“This is amongst the top 10 most massive black holes ever discovered, and quite possibly the most massive,” said researcher Professor Thomas Collett, of the University of Portsmouth.

“Most of the other black hole mass measurements are indirect and have quite large uncertainties, so we really don't know for sure which is biggest. However, we’ve got much more certainty about the mass of this black hole thanks to our new method.”

Researchers detected the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole using a combination of gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics (the study of the motion of stars within galaxies and the speed and way they move around black holes).

The latter is seen as the gold standard for measuring black hole masses, but doesn't really work outside of the very nearby universe because galaxies appear too small on the sky to resolve the region where a supermassive or ultramassive black hole lies.

Adding in gravitational lensing helped the team “push much further out into the universe”, Professor Collett said.

“We detected the effect of the black hole in two ways – it is altering the path that light takes as it travels past the black hole and it is causing the stars in the inner regions of its host galaxy to move extremely quickly (almost 400 km/s).

“By combining these two measurements we can be completely confident that the black hole is real.”

Lead researcher, PhD candidate Carlos Melo, of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil, added: “This discovery was made for a 'dormant' black hole – one that isn’t actively accreting material at the time of observation.

“Its detection relied purely on its immense gravitational pull and the effect it has on its surroundings.

“What is particularly exciting is that this method allows us to detect and measure the mass of these hidden ultramassive black holes across the universe, even when they are completely silent.”

Another image of the Cosmic Horseshoe, but with the pair of images of a second background source highlighted. The faint central image forms close to the black hole, which is what made the new discovery possible. Credit: NASA/ESA/Tian Li(University of Portsmouth)
Licence type: Attribution (CC BY 4.0)

The Cosmic Horseshoe black hole is located a long way away from Earth, at a distance of some 5 billion light-years.

“Typically, for such remote systems, black hole mass measurements are only possible when the black hole is active,” Melo said. “But those accretion-based estimates often come with significant uncertainties.

“Our approach, combining strong lensing with stellar dynamics, offers a more direct and robust measurement, even for these distant systems.”

The discovery is significant because it will help astronomers understand the connection between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.

“We think the size of both is intimately linked,” Professor Collett added, “because when galaxies grow they can funnel matter down onto the central black hole.

“Some of this matter grows the black hole but lots of it shines away in an incredibly bright source called a quasar. These quasars dump huge amounts of energy into their host galaxies, which stops gas clouds condensing into new stars.”

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, hosts a 4 million solar mass black hole. Currently it's not growing fast enough to blast out energy as a quasar but we know it has done in the past, and it may will do again in the future.

The Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way are moving together and are expected to merge in about 4.5 billion years, which is the most likely time for our supermassive black hole to become a quasar once again, the researchers say.

An interesting feature of the Cosmic Horseshoe system is that the host galaxy is a so-called fossil group.

Fossil groups are the end state of the most massive gravitationally bound structures in the universe, arising when they have collapsed down to a single extremely massive galaxy, with no bright companions.

“It is likely that all of the supermassive black holes that were originally in the companion galaxies have also now merged to form the ultramassive black hole that we have detected,” said Professor Collett.

“So we're seeing the end state of galaxy formation and the end state of black hole formation.”

The discovery of the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole was somewhat of a serendipitou discovery. It came about as the researchers were studying the galaxy’s dark matter distribution in an attempt to learn more about the mysterious hypothetical substance.

Now that they’ve realised their new method works for black holes, they hope to use data from the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope to detect more supermassive black holes and their hosts to help understand how black holes stop galaxies forming stars.
highlights


Media contacts:

Sam Tonkin (Submitted by)
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 700

press@ras.ac.uk

Dr Robert Massey
Royal Astronomical Society
Mob: +44 (0)7802 877 699

press@ras.ac.uk

Science contacts:

Carlos Melo
UFRGS

crmc.melo@gmail.com

Professor Thomas Collett
University of Portsmouth

thomas.collett@port.ac.uk



Further information

The paper ‘Unveiling a 36 Billion Solar Mass Black Hole at the Centre of the Cosmic Horseshoe Gravitational Lens’ by Carlos Roberto and Thomas Collett et al. has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. DOI: 10.1093/mnras/staf1036.



Notes for editors

About the Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), founded in 1820, encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science.

The RAS organises scientific meetings, publishes international research and review journals, recognises outstanding achievements by the award of medals and prizes, maintains an extensive library, supports education through grants and outreach activities and represents UK astronomy nationally and internationally. Its more than 4,000 members (Fellows), a third based overseas, include scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy and others.

The RAS accepts papers for its journals based on the principle of peer review, in which fellow experts on the editorial boards accept the paper as worth considering. The Society issues press releases based on a similar principle, but the organisations and scientists concerned have overall responsibility for their content.

Keep up with the RAS on
Instagram, Bluesky, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.