Highlights from AAS Nova: 25 October - 7 November 2020

AAS Nova provides brief highlights of recently published articles from the AAS journals, i.e., The Astronomical Journal (AJ), The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), ApJ Letters, ApJ Supplements, The Planetary Science Journal, and Research Notes of the AAS. 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 web page for more posts.

6 November 2020
Eccentricity, Spin, and the Origins of Colliding Black Holes
The dramatic collision of two enormous black holes has provided new clues pointing to how this binary originally formed.

4 November 2020
A Distant Quasar as a Cosmic Clock
Hungry supermassive black holes in the distant cosmos can help us understand what happened shortly after our universe lit up with its first stars and galaxies.

3 November 2020
Don’t Change the Station! Substellar Objects Are Up Next
Astrobites reports on the first direct radio discovery of a brown dwarf, an object in the gray area between star and planet.

2 November 2020
Checking the Speed of Spirals
Gravity or a planetary companion? Recent work uses speed measurements to determine what’s driving the spiral arms in one protoplanetary disk.

30 October 2020
Spotting a Distant Afterglow
You’ve got to be quick to spot the afterglow from a short gamma-ray burst! A recent success story reveals one of the most distant bursts we’ve discovered.

28 October 2020
A Look at the Atmosphere of a Nearby Hot Neptune
A planet that should be completely irradiated has somehow held on to its atmosphere. New work examines what this planet reveals about rare hot Neptunes.

27 October 2020
The Aftermath of a Neutron Star Collision
New simulations examine the complicated picture of what happens after two neutron stars collide.

26 October 2020
Implications of an Enormous, Early Black Hole
Scientists have discovered a monster in the early universe, and it’s challenging our understanding of how black holes grow.