Highlights from AAS Nova: 10 - 23 February 2019

AAS Nova provides brief highlights of recently published articles from the AAS journals, i.e., The Astronomical Journal (AJ) and The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), ApJ Letters, and ApJ Supplements. The website's intent is to gain broader exposure for AAS authors and to provide astronomy researchers and enthusiasts with summaries of recent, interesting research across a wide range of astronomical fields.

The following are the AAS Nova highlights from the past two weeks; follow the links to read more, or visit the AAS Nova webpage for more posts.

22 February 2019
A Hazy Day Around TRAPPIST-1?
A new study explores whether the skies of the TRAPPIST-1 family of planets are likely cloudy or clear.

20 February 2019
Holding Together a Speeding Cloud
High-velocity clouds observed in our galaxy’s halo pose a conundrum: given their tenuous nature and large speeds, why haven’t they been ripped apart?

19 February 2019
How to Find Exoplanets and "Listen" to Their Stars with TESS
Astrobites reports on what we can gain when we use TESS not only to discover new exoplanets, but also to "listen" to their host stars.

18 February 2019
Insights from MU₆₉’s (Lack of) Craters
Predictions of crater counts on 2014 MU₆₉’s surface were made in December, before the New Horizons flyby. Will they prove correct? And what can we learn from them?

15 February 2019
Can Magnetic Fields Help Planetesimals Form?
The inner regions of protoplanetary disks have strong magnetic fields. What effect does the presence of a magnetic field have on planet formation?

13 February 2019
Dwarf Galaxy or Giant Globular Cluster?
You might think that we’d already discovered all the large clusters of stars orbiting our galaxy. Surprisingly, there are still detections to be made — though we’re not always sure what we’re looking at.

12 February 2019
Where’s Lucy Going? Studying Asteroid Mission Targets
Astrobites reports on work preparing for Lucy, a new mission that will fly by multiple asteroids near Jupiter in the late 2020s.

11 February 2019
Featured Image: Tracking Motions of Local Galaxies
Gaia measurements of thousands of stars are helping us to pin down the motions (and future collisions!) of the galaxies around us.