New space telescope will reopen astronomers’ view of the far-infrared

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By Daniel Clery, Science. 

Excerpt: NASA has selected a far-infrared space telescope to explore the faint, cool glow of gas and dust that fuel star formation and coalesce into planets. The $1.2 billion PRIMA is NASA’s first Probe class mission, intended to fill a gap between relatively inexpensive, researcher-led Explorer missions and multibillion-dollar flagship missions such as the JWST observatory. Due to launch in 2033, PRIMA would also end an observing gap for astronomers, who have lacked a space-based far-infrared instrument since Europe’s Herschel telescope ceased operation in 2013.... 

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NASA’s Roman telescope readies a sweeping view of the universe

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By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: In recent years, astronomy has become a big data science, with survey telescopes capturing thousands of objects in a single look. As soon as 30 August, NASA will take that approach into space with the launch of the $4.3 billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. With the Hubble Space Telescope’s sharp vision but a field of view 100 times larger, Roman will rapidly survey the sky to tackle some of astronomy’s biggest questions—from the nature of dark energy to the demographics of planets around other stars....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-roman-telescope-readies-sweeping-view-universe .
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Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate

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By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Our Sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world’s fate. Using data from the  TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observatory , astronomers  Edward Bryant  of the University of Warwick and  Vincent Van Eylen  of University College London compared systems with stars in the main sequence of their lifetimes—fusing hydrogen, like the Sun—with post–main sequence stars closer to the end of their lifetimes, both with and without planets. “We saw that these planets are getting rarer [as stars age],” Bryant said. In other words,  planets are disappearing as their host stars grow old . The comparison between planetary systems w...
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This ‘Galaxy That Wasn’t’ Never Bore Any Stars

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By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This week, astronomers announced the discovery of a new kind of cosmic object, something that is very nearly a galaxy, save for one crucial, missing ingredient: stars. The almost-galaxy is about 14 million light-years from Earth. It was the ninth cloud found to be associated with a nearby spiral galaxy, leading to its serendipitous name: Cloud-9. The object is starless, consisting of only a haze of hydrogen gas that astronomers believe is swaddled in a much more massive clump of  dark matter,  the invisible substance that permeates the cosmos and shapes its overarching structure. ...Cloud-9 is the first confirmed example of what astronomers call a RELHIC, short for Reionization-Limited H I Cloud and pronounced “relic.” Such objects are rich in gaseous hydrogen but devoid of any stars. They are  failed galaxies  thought to be nearly as old as time itself, primordial fossils that can help astronomers understand the...
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