“Now that Cheops has observed its first target, we are one step closer to the start of the mission science,” says physicist Kate Isaak, ESA Cheops project scientist, about the mission to observe bright stars that are already known to host alien worlds that are larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune, by measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc. “This beautifully blurred image carries the promise of a new, deeper understanding of worlds beyond our Solar System.”
An enigma within a mystery revealed an explanation to the peculiar emission lines seen in a supernovae as bright as an entire galaxy – SN 2006gy, a hypernova or quark-nova inside galaxy NGC 1260, some 250 million light-years away, first discovered on September 18, 2006- as well as an explanation for its previously unknown origin.
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“These pristine stars are among the oldest surviving stars in the Universe, and certainly the oldest stars we have ever seen,” said astronomer Louise Howes at The Australian National University (ANU), currently at Lund University, who was a member of a 2015 team along with the University of Cambridge, about the discovery of of stars that date from before the Milky Way Galaxy formed, when the Universe was just 300 million years old. The stars, found near the center of the Milky Way, are surprisingly pristine, but contain material from an even earlier star, which died in an enormous hypernova explosion. “Our Milky Way galaxy formed around them,” she added.
