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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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.

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.

Science January 26, 2021

When galaxies collide—Models suggest galactic collisions can starve massive black holes

It was previously thought that collisions between galaxies would necessarily add to the activity of the massive black holes at their centers. However, researchers have performed the most accurate simulations of a range of collision scenarios and have found that some collisions can reduce the activity of their central black holes.

Science December 18, 2020

Compressive Fluctuations Heat Ions in Space Plasma

New simulations carried out in part on the ATERUI II supercomputer in Japan have found that the reason ions exist at higher temperatures than electrons in space plasma is because they are better able to absorb energy from compressive turbulent fluctuations in the plasma.

Science December 8, 2020

Study Confirms Dark Coating Can Reduce Satellite Reflectivity

Observations conducted by the Murikabushi Telescope of Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory confirmed that dark coating can reduce satellite reflectivity by half.

Science November 26, 2020

Earth Faster, Closer to Black Hole in New Map of Galaxy

Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. But don...

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Science October 28, 2020

Galaxies in the Infant Universe were Surprisingly Mature

Massive galaxies were already much more mature in the early universe than previously expected.