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Astronomers Snap First Confirmed Direct Image of a Brown Dwarf Orbiting a Star in the Hyades Cluster
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A team of astronomers using two Maunakea Observatories in Hawaiʻi – W. M. Keck Observatory and Subaru Telescope – have photographed a brown dwarf orbiting HIP 21152, a young Sun-like star in the Hyades Cluster. Located just 150 light-years away, Hyades is the closest star cluster to Earth in the constellation Taurus; […]
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A Pair of Black Holes Dining Together in Nearby Galaxy Merger
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – While studying a nearby pair of merging galaxies, scientists discovered two supermassive black holes growing simultaneously near the center of the newly coalescing galaxy, dubbed UGC 4211. These super-hungry giants are the closest together that scientists have ever observed in multiple wavelengths. What’s more, the new research reveals that binary black holes […]
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Surprise Kilonova Upends Established Understanding of Long Gamma-ray Bursts
Long Gamma-ray Bursts Can Be Generated by Neutron Star Mergers, Study Finds Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – For nearly two decades, astrophysicists have believed that long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) resulted solely from the collapse of massive stars. Now, a new study upends that long-established and long-accepted belief. Led by Northwestern University, a team of astrophysicists have uncovered […]
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Tracing the Origins of Rare, Cosmic Explosions
Astronomers Produce the Most Robust Catalog to Date of Short Gamma-Ray Burst Hosts Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A team of astronomers led by Northwestern University has created the most extensive inventory yet of the galaxies where short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) come from. Using several highly sensitive instruments at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi and […]
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New Record: Nearest Known Black Hole to Earth Discovered
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers using two Maunakea Observatories, W. M. Keck Observatory and the Gemini North telescope, have found the closest known black hole to our planet. Located a mere 1,560 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, the black hole, named Gaia BH1, is three times closer to us than the previous record-holder. […]
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Massive Stars’ Blasts Hitting Orion’s “Sword” Mapped in Unprecedented Detail Using Hawaiʻi Telescope
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Hawaiʻi Island have captured from Maunakea the most detailed and complete images ever taken of the zone where the famed constellation of Orion gets zapped with ultraviolet (UV) radiation from massive young stars. This irradiated neutral zone, called a Photo-Dissociation Region (PDR), is located in […]
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Hawaiʻi Telescopes Help Uncover Origins of Castaway Gamma-Ray Bursts
Maunakea Observatories Aid in Revealing That Seemingly Lonely Bursts Came From Previously Undiscovered Galaxies in the Early Universe A number of mysterious gamma-ray bursts appear as lonely flashes of intense energy far from any obvious galactic home, raising questions about their true origins and distances. Using data from some of the most powerful telescopes on […]
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Heaviest Neutron Star to Date is a ‘Black Widow’ Eating its Mate
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A dense, collapsed star spinning 707 times per second — making it one of the fastest spinning neutron stars in the Milky Way galaxy — has shredded and consumed nearly the entire mass of its stellar companion and, in the process, grown into the heaviest neutron star observed to date. The study […]
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Making the Nearly Invisible, Visible: Astronomers Trace the Gas that Breathes Life into Galaxies
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi— Astronomers have developed a groundbreaking new method of seeing the massive, but barely visible gas tanks that fuel star formation. With this innovative technique, the researchers have created the first ever spatial maps of the enormous, translucent gas clouds that birth galaxies, shedding new light on galactic evolution and star formation in the […]
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“Black Widow” Star Devours Its Rapidly Circling Companion
Finding Represents the Shortest-period Black Widow Binary Found to Date Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – In black widow star systems, a rapidly spinning dead star, called a pulsar, blasts its lower-mass orbiting companion with radiation, slowly evaporating it. Like their namesake spiders, the pulsars take advantage of their companions before destroying them, in this case by harnessing […]
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