Posted on by Evan Gough

Roman Will Learn the Ages of Hundreds of Thousands of Stars

By carefully observing star spots, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will determine stellar ages. It needs some help from AI though. Image Credit: NASA and STScI

Astronomers routinely provide the ages of the stars they study. But the methods of measuring ages aren’t 100% accurate. Measuring the ages of distant stars is a difficult task.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should make some progress.

Continue reading “Roman Will Learn the Ages of Hundreds of Thousands of Stars”
Posted on by Scott Alan Johnston

Two Stars Orbiting Each Other So Closely They Could Fit Inside the Sun

A brown dwarf: an object that weighs in somewhere between Jupiter and the least-massive known star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers have discovered a pair of star-like objects orbiting each other extremely quickly, with an entire ‘year’ lasting just 1.9 Earth hours. Catchily named ZTF J2020+5033, the system consists of one object which is definitely a small star, and another that straddles the boundary between star and planet. The two objects appear to be very old, and understanding how they came to be orbiting so close together is teaching astronomers more about how solar systems change and evolve.

Continue reading “Two Stars Orbiting Each Other So Closely They Could Fit Inside the Sun”