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On our bookshelf Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 May Chiao
What’s Hidden Inside Planets? Sabine Stanley & John WenzJohns Hopkins: 2023. 245pp. $16.95 Next time you look up at a colourful auroral display in the ionosphere, give a thought to the Earth’s molten iron core that makes the shimmering light show possible. As Sabine Stanley explains in What’s Hidden Inside Planets, there is quite a lot going on beneath the surface — from the processes controlling the
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Maintaining spherical polarization in solar wind plasma Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Bishwanath Gaire
The solar wind consists of plasma with fluctuating velocity and magnetic fields in a manner often referred to as Alfvénic. A magnetic field (B) and its fluctuation (δB) with only a small change in its intensity (that is, δB/B ~1) is called spherical polarization. For large-amplitude magnetic fields, this condition (δB/B ~1) is equivalent to the rotation of the magnetic field vector. When the plasma
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Under new management Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
As the eighth anniversary of Nature Astronomy’s opening to submissions nears, we say goodbye to our inaugural Chief Editor, May Chiao, and welcome her successor, Paul Woods, to the helm.
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Magnetic Reconnection on Z experiments Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Bishwanath Gaire
Magnetic energy in magnetized plasma is converted into kinetic energy through magnetic reconnection; a phenomenon that commonly occurs in astrophysical plasma and has been observed in laboratory plasma. Radiative cooling can disrupt such an energy transfer process. Rishabh Datta et al. have studied strong radiative cooling in a laboratory experiment called Magnetic Reconnection on Z (MARZ), using the
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The hunt for PeVatrons as the origin of the most energetic photons observed in the Galaxy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, Ruben López-Coto, Felix Aharonian, Elena Amato, Zhen Cao, Stefano Gabici, Jim Hinton
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Venus as an anchor point for planetary habitability Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Stephen R. Kane, Paul K. Byrne
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Orbital polarimetric tomography of a flare near the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Aviad Levis, Andrew A. Chael, Katherine L. Bouman, Maciek Wielgus, Pratul P. Srinivasan
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Revealing the 3D structure of a flare orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
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In situ observation of mass ejections caused by magnetic reconnections in the ionosphere of Mars Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Yudong Ye, Xiaojun Xu, Lou-Chuang Lee, Jiang Yu, Jing Wang, Bei Zhu, Qing Chang, Jiaying Xu, Qi Xu, Zilu Zhou
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Reply to: Highlighting the back-action contribution of matter to quantum sensor network performance in multi-messenger astronomy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Andrei Derevianko, Derek F. Jackson Kimball, Conner Dailey
replying to Y. Stadnik Nature Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02245-4 (2024) Recently, along with a team of collaborators, we proposed that quantum sensor networks could be used for a multi-messenger astronomy in a new exotic physics modality1; that is, a search for signals from high-energy astrophysical events that produce intense bursts of exotic low-mass fields (ELFs) associated with
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Highlighting the back-action contribution of matter to quantum sensor network performance in multi-messenger astronomy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yevgeny V. Stadnik
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Free-floating binary planets from ejections during close stellar encounters Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yihan Wang, Rosalba Perna, Zhaohuan Zhu
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Asteroid Kamo‘oalewa’s journey from the lunar Giordano Bruno crater to Earth 1:1 resonance Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yifei Jiao, Bin Cheng, Yukun Huang, Erik Asphaug, Brett Gladman, Renu Malhotra, Patrick Michel, Yang Yu, Hexi Baoyin
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Hints of a physical origin for the S8 tension Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Morgan Hollis
The open problems of the S8 tension and its close cousin, the Hubble tension, are some of the key cosmological challenges to the reigning champion of models of the Universe, ΛCDM. Undetermined systematic effects in the measured datasets are often invoked in an attempt to explain these tensions, however S.A. Adil et al. suggest a physical origin of the discrepancy, based on a Bayesian prior analysis
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Expanding our limits with Euclid Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Luca Maltagliati
Euclid is the latest space telescope launched by the European Space Agency, on 1 July 2023. By surveying a third of the sky during its 6-year nominal mission with its two cameras, covering the visible and near-infrared range between 0.53 and 1.85 µm, Euclid is focused on understanding the role of dark energy and dark matter in the evolution of the Universe. However, Euclid will provide insight in other
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High-resolution observations and numerical simulations provide insight into solar atmospheric heating Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15
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Sputnik Planitia as an impactor remnant indicative of an ancient rocky mascon in an oceanless Pluto Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Harry A. Ballantyne, Erik Asphaug, C. Adeene Denton, Alexandre Emsenhuber, Martin Jutzi
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Chromospheric and coronal heating in an active region plage by dissipation of currents from braiding Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Souvik Bose, Bart De Pontieu, Viggo Hansteen, Alberto Sainz Dalda, Sabrina Savage, Amy Winebarger
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Decomposing data at distance Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Paul Woods
Emission lines from molecules and their ions can act as diagnostic tools of distant and even extragalactic interstellar media. Using ALMA, Nanase Harada et al. present an atlas of images of nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253, which has been created from 148 unblended emission lines arising from 44 different species. Using a principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimension of the data space,
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Innovative measurements of stellar mass loss Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Bradford J. Wargelin
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X-ray detection of astrospheres around three main-sequence stars and their mass-loss rates Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 K. G. Kislyakova, M. Güdel, D. Koutroumpa, J. A. Carter, C. M. Lisse, S. Boro Saikia
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Identification of the weak-to-strong transition in Alfvénic turbulence from space plasma Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Siqi Zhao, Huirong Yan, Terry Z. Liu, Ka Ho Yuen, Huizi Wang
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JWST detection of a supernova associated with GRB 221009A without an r-process signature Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Peter K. Blanchard, V. Ashley Villar, Ryan Chornock, Tanmoy Laskar, Yijia Li, Joel Leja, Justin Pierel, Edo Berger, Raffaella Margutti, Kate D. Alexander, Jennifer Barnes, Yvette Cendes, Tarraneh Eftekhari, Daniel Kasen, Natalie LeBaron, Brian D. Metzger, James Muzerolle Page, Armin Rest, Huei Sears, Daniel M. Siegel, S. Karthik Yadavalli
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BepiColombo observations of cold oxygen and carbon ions in the flank of the induced magnetosphere of Venus Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 L. Z. Hadid, D. Delcourt, Y. Saito, M. Fränz, S. Yokota, B. Fiethe, C. Verdeil, B. Katra, F. Leblanc, H. Fischer, M. Persson, S. Aizawa, N. André, Y. Harada, A. Fedorov, D. Fontaine, N. Krupp, H. Michalik, J-J. Berthelier, H. Krüger, G. Murakami, S. Matsuda, D. Heyner, H.-U. Auster, I. Richter, J. Z. D. Mieth, D. Schmid, D. Fischer
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Magnetic origin of the discrepancy between stellar limb-darkening models and observations Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Nadiia M. Kostogryz, Alexander I. Shapiro, Veronika Witzke, Robert H. Cameron, Laurent Gizon, Natalie A. Krivova, Hans-G. Ludwig, Pierre F. L. Maxted, Sara Seager, Sami K. Solanki, Jeff Valenti
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A call for Indigenous partnership in the return to the Moon Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-11 Frank Tavares, Monica Vidaurri, Adeene Denton, J. A. Grier, Alvin Harvey, Moses Milazzo, Hunter Olson, Parvathy Prem, Daniella Scalice, Aparna Venkatesan
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An anorthositic meteorite supporting an ancient magma ocean on Vesta Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Shijie Li, Dongliang Zhang, Qiao Shu, Huiming Bao, Xiaobin Cao, Jia Liu, Liping Qin, Yan Fan, Shenghua Zhou, Dehan Shen, Mingbao Li
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Linear to circular conversion in the polarized radio emission of a magnetar Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Marcus E. Lower, Simon Johnston, Maxim Lyutikov, Donald B. Melrose, Ryan M. Shannon, Patrick Weltevrede, Manisha Caleb, Fernando Camilo, Andrew D. Cameron, Shi Dai, George Hobbs, Di Li, Kaustubh M. Rajwade, John E. Reynolds, John M. Sarkissian, Benjamin W. Stappers
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A model for heating the super-hot corona in solar active regions Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Zekun Lu, Feng Chen, M. D. Ding, Can Wang, Yu Dai, Xin Cheng
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A freely precessing magnetar following an X-ray outburst Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Gregory Desvignes, Patrick Weltevrede, Yong Gao, David Ian Jones, Michael Kramer, Manisha Caleb, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Lina Levin, Kuo Liu, Andrew G. Lyne, Lijing Shao, Ben Stappers, Jérôme Pétri
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Unusual Ti minerals on the Moon produced by space weathering Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Xiaojia Zeng, Yanxue Wu, Wen Yu, Bing Mo, Yuanyun Wen, Xiaomei Zhao, Xiongyao Li, Xiaoping Zhang, Jianzhong Liu
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Rapidly rotating or not? Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 May Chiao
Evolved stars are expected to rotate, but ALMA observations of a dipolar velocity field at Betelgeuse suggest an extremely rapid rotation rate of 5.47 ± 0.25 km s-1, which is two orders of magnitude faster than predicted. Ma et al. test whether the dipolar structure could come from a nonrotating star instead. For instance, two large surface convective cells moving in opposite directions could mimic
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TheCannon for abundances in solar analogues Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Luca Maltagliati
Various observations indicate that the Sun is depleted in refractory elements compared to the majority of Sun-like stars. Rayna Rampalli and colleagues extract abundances of such elements in thousands of Sun-like stars from spectra obtained by different surveys, in order to confirm the depletion and set constraints on its causes. The authors use TheCannon, an algorithm that is trained on a highly precise
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Cosmic recipe book updated Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Paul Woods
A pioneer of Open Science in astronomy, the UMIST Database for Astrochemistry (UDfA) has recently released its sixth iteration and now contains 8,767 gas-phase chemical reactions — involving 737 chemical species — and their reaction rate coefficients. This is an increase of more than 40% in comparison to the previous version, released in 2013. The growth reflects the number of reaction rates measured
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Enrichment by extragalactic first stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Anirudh Chiti, Mohammad Mardini, Guilherme Limberg, Anna Frebel, Alexander P. Ji, Henrique Reggiani, Peter Ferguson, Hillary Diane Andales, Kaley Brauer, Ting S. Li, Joshua D. Simon
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Sowing the seeds of early galaxy evolution Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-19 Morgan Hollis
The emergence of massive black holes early on in the history of the Universe is a topic brought to the fore by recent JWST results. If these behemoths formed according to the conventional paradigm — with growth mechanisms taking place over billions of years — then how can there be as many as we now observe, already in existence so soon after the Big Bang? Roberto Maiolino and collaborators seek to
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Insights from LHAASO and IceCube into the origin of the Galactic diffuse teraelectronvolt–petaelectronvolt emission Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Kai Yan, Ruo-Yu Liu, Rui Zhang, Chao-Ming Li, Qiang Yuan, Xiang-Yu Wang
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Modelling the impact of DART on the asteroid Dimorphos reveals its rubble-pile structure Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-12
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Oxygen production from dissociation of Europa’s water-ice surface Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-04 J. R. Szalay, F. Allegrini, R. W. Ebert, F. Bagenal, S. J. Bolton, S. Fatemi, D. J. McComas, A. Pontoni, J. Saur, H. T. Smith, D. F. Strobel, S. D. Vance, A. Vorburger, R. J. Wilson
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A massive interacting galaxy 510 million years after the Big Bang Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-07 Kristan Boyett, Michele Trenti, Nicha Leethochawalit, Antonello Calabró, Benjamin Metha, Guido Roberts-Borsani, Nicoló Dalmasso, Lilan Yang, Paola Santini, Tommaso Treu, Tucker Jones, Alaina Henry, Charlotte A. Mason, Takahiro Morishita, Themiya Nanayakkara, Namrata Roy, Xin Wang, Adriano Fontana, Emiliano Merlin, Marco Castellano, Diego Paris, Maruša Bradač, Matt Malkan, Danilo Marchesini, Sara Mascia
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Resolved ALMA observations of water in the inner astronomical units of the HL Tau disk Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Stefano Facchini, Leonardo Testi, Elizabeth Humphreys, Mathieu Vander Donckt, Andrea Isella, Ramon Wrzosek, Alain Baudry, Malcom D. Gray, Anita M. S. Richards, Wouter Vlemmmings
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Physical properties of asteroid Dimorphos as derived from the DART impact Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 S. D. Raducan, M. Jutzi, A. F. Cheng, Y. Zhang, O. Barnouin, G. S. Collins, R. T. Daly, T. M. Davison, C. M. Ernst, T. L. Farnham, F. Ferrari, M. Hirabayashi, K. M. Kumamoto, P. Michel, N. Murdoch, R. Nakano, M. Pajola, A. Rossi, H. F. Agrusa, B. W. Barbee, M. Bruck Syal, N. L. Chabot, E. Dotto, E. G. Fahnestock, P. H. Hasselmann, I. Herreros, S. Ivanovski, J. -Y. Li, A. Lucchetti, R. Luther, J. Ormö
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Cosmic dust may have driven the geochemical origins of life on Earth Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-27
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OH as a probe of the warm-water cycle in planet-forming disks Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Marion Zannese, Benoît Tabone, Emilie Habart, Javier R. Goicoechea, Alexandre Zanchet, Ewine F. van Dishoeck, Marc C. van Hemert, John H. Black, Alexander G. G. M. Tielens, A. Veselinova, P. G. Jambrina, M. Menendez, E. Verdasco, F. J. Aoiz, L. Gonzalez-Sanchez, Boris Trahin, Emmanuel Dartois, Olivier Berné, Els Peeters, Jinhua He, Ameek Sidhu, Ryan Chown, Ilane Schroetter, Dries Van De Putte, Amélie
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In situ probes of coronal mass ejections Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 May Chiao
As it travels through the corona and into the heliosphere, a CME interacts with the environment, thereby losing coherence once it arrives at Earth. But with BepiColombo (BC) and Parker Solar Probe (PSP) near Mercury at the time — only 0.35 au from the Sun — Palmerio et al. were able to track the timings of CME-related features (in sequence: shock, sheath, ejecta) and compare the data between the probes
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The (probable) gas-rich nature of K2-18 b Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Luca Maltagliati
The nature of exoplanet K2-18 b is under intense debate. A recent theory, purportedly supported by JWST data (Astrophys. J. Lett. 956, L13; 2023), suggested that this 2.6-R⊕ planet in the classical ‘habitable zone’ of its star has a thin hydrogen-rich atmosphere but a water-rich interior and a global liquid water ocean — a ‘Hycean’ world — boosting its habitability prospects. Nicholas Wogan and colleagues
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Face-to-face with PHANGS Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Paul Woods
The multiwavelength views present different, but complementary, impressions of the galaxy. The JWST observations in the top left corner show bright spiral arms composed of stars, gas and dust, whereas in the HST image, bottom right, the spiral arms are dark. That is because dust absorbs UV and visible light, re-emitting it at infrared wavelengths. In the JWST image, the spiral arm material appears
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GADGET Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Paul Woods
Volker Springel created the original GADGET code more than 25 years ago. Now it supports some of the largest simulations in astrophysics, and is being developed to do vastly more.
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Two decades for twin rovers Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21
Twenty years ago, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on Mars. Over the next 15 years, they showed us a planet that was warmer and wetter — and capable of sustaining life — that we now take as read.
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Forty days and forty-five nights at space’s edge Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-21 Richard Massey, C. Barth Netterfield, William C. Jones
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Cosmic dust fertilization of glacial prebiotic chemistry on early Earth Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Craig R. Walton, Jessica K. Rigley, Alexander Lipp, Robert Law, Martin D. Suttle, Maria Schönbächler, Mark Wyatt, Oliver Shorttle
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Baryonic properties of nearby galaxies across the stellar-to-total dynamical mass relation Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Laura Scholz-Díaz, Ignacio Martín-Navarro, Jesús Falcón-Barroso, Mariya Lyubenova, Glenn van de Ven
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The accretion of a solar mass per day by a 17-billion solar mass black hole Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-19 Christian Wolf, Samuel Lai, Christopher A. Onken, Neelesh Amrutha, Fuyan Bian, Wei Jeat Hon, Patrick Tisserand, Rachel L. Webster
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The turbulent aftermath of a neutron star collision Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Philipp Mösta
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The persistent ring of M87* confirms predictions Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Morgan Hollis
The first image of a black hole shadow graced the front pages of newspapers around the world when it was released by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration in 2019. Here the EHT team follows on from that groundbreaking result, presenting re-imaging of the same supermassive black hole M87* using data from the subsequent observing run, in April 2018. Significant improvements have been made since
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Planetary research and the search for life beyond Earth in Kyiv, Ukraine Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Charles S. Cockell, Natalia O. Kozyrovska, Iryna V. Kulyk, Mykhailo A. Tukalo, Yaroslav S. Yatskiv, Ganna V. Zubova
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A large-scale magnetic field produced by a solar-like dynamo in binary neutron star mergers Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Kenta Kiuchi, Alexis Reboul-Salze, Masaru Shibata, Yuichiro Sekiguchi
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Diverse volcanism and crustal recycling on early Mars Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Joseph R. Michalski, A. Deanne Rogers, Christopher S. Edwards, Aster Cowart, Long Xiao