Science April 16, 2021

Surprise Twist Suggests Stars Grow Competitively

A survey of star formation activity in the Orion Nebula Cluster found similar mass distributions for newborn stars and dense gas cores, which may evolve into stars. Counterintuitively, this means that the amount of gas a core accretes as it develops, and not the initial mass of the core, is the key factor in deciding the final mass of the produced star.

Science April 14, 2021

Telescopes Unite in Unprecedented Observations of Famous Black Hole

In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told. Data from 19 observatories are being released that promise to give unparalleled insight into this black hole and the system it powers, and to improve tests of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

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Science April 6, 2021

Exploring Comet Thermal History: Burnt-out Comet Covered with Talcum Powder

The world’s first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of phyllosilicate; on Earth large grains of phyllosilicate are commonly available as talcum powder.

Science March 29, 2021

Stellar Eggs near Galactic Center Hatching into Baby Stars

Astronomers found a number of stellar eggs containing baby stars around the center of the Milky Way using ALMA. These findings indicate that star formation is more resilient than researchers thought.

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Topics March 19, 2021

Mareki Honma Wins ASJ’s Hayashi Chushiro Prize

Prof. Mareki Honma, Director of NAOJ Mizusawa VLBI Observatory, has received the 2020 Hayashi Chushiro Prize from the Astronomical Society of Japan (ASJ).

Topics March 19, 2021

Japanese Amateur Astronomer Discovers New Nova in Cassiopeia

A new 9.6-magnitude nova has been discovered.

Science March 19, 2021

American Astronomers Find Secrets of Japanese Universes

Working from a mock catalog of galaxies prepared by a Japanese team, two American teams correctly guessed the cosmological parameters used to generate the catalog to within 1% accuracy. This gives us confidence that their methods will be able to determine the correct parameters of the real Universe when applied to observational data.

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Science February 20, 2021

Sounding Rocket CLASP2 Elucidates Solar Magnetic Field

Cooperative operations between a solar observation satellite and a sounding-rocket telescope have measured the magnetic field strength in the photosphere and chromosphere above an active solar plage region.

Topics February 20, 2021

CLASP2 Team Receives NASA/MSFC Group Achievement Honor Award

The Japan-US-Europe Joint Rocket Experiment (CLASP2) team received the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Group Achievement Honor Award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Science February 16, 2021

Supercomputer Turns Back Cosmic Clock

Astronomers have tested a method for reconstructing the state of the early Universe by applying it to 4000 simulated universes using the ATERUI II supercomputer at NAOJ. They found that together with new observations the method can set better constraints on inflation.