A Japan-Spain team has developed a powerful 4-color simultaneous camera named MuSCAT2 for the 1.52-m Telescopio Carlos Sánchez at the Teide Observatory, Canaries, Spain. The instrument aims to find a large number of transiting exoplanets, including Earth-like habitable planets orbiting stars near the Sun, in collaboration with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched in…
Origin of Extraordinary Supernovae
Using data obtained through the Optical and Infrared Synergetic Telescopes for Education and Research (OISTER) in Japan, Masayuki Yamanaka, a Taro Hirao Foundation Researcher at Konan University, demonstrated that the origin of extraordinary supernovae can be explained by the ‘accretion scenario.’ The researchers discovered an anomalously strong infrared emission from ‘the extraordinary supernova’ SN 2012dn,…
Signs Of Second Largest Black Hole In The Milky Way
A team of astronomers led by Tomoharu Oka, a professor at Keio University in Japan, has found an enigmatic gas cloud, called CO-0.40-0.22, only 200 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. What makes CO-0.40-0.22 unusual is its surprisingly wide velocity dispersion: the cloud contains gas with a very wide range of…