The filamentary structure of the jet in 3C 279 revealed by RadioAstron. a, Total intensity (left) and linearly polarized (right) RadioAstron image at 1.3 cm obtained on 10 March 2014. While both images in a show brightness temperature (color scale), the image on the right also shows the recovered electric vector position angles overlaid as ticks. Their
The SPIRou spectrograph optical system in the clean room at IRAP/OMP in Toulouse. Credit: S. Chastanet—Service communication OMP The 11-year solar activity cycle is a well-known phenomenon, during which the intensity of the sun’s magnetic field varies and its polarities reverse. Over the past 30 years, astronomers have identified similar behavior in several sun-like stars.
Credit: NASA / CSA / ESA / J. Olmsted (STScI) / Science: N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University) Are we alone? This question is nearly as old as humanity itself. Today, this question in astronomy focuses on finding life beyond our planet. Are we, as a species, and as a planet, alone? Or is there life somewhere
The Chinese Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). Credit: Bojun Wang, Jinchen Jiang & Qisheng Cui More than 15 years after the discovery of fast radio bursts (FRBs)—millisecond-long, deep-space cosmic explosions of electromagnetic radiation—astronomers worldwide have been combing the universe to uncover clues about how and why they form. Nearly all FRBs identified have originated
Credit: Julian Baum The search for planets outside our solar system—exoplanets—is one of the most rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Over the past few decades, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected and astronomers now estimate that on average there is at least one planet per star in our galaxy. Many current research efforts aim