Laniakea: Newly identified galactic supercluster is home to the Milky Way
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT)—among other telescopes—have determined that our own Milky Way galaxy is part of a newly identified ginormous supercluster of galaxies, which they have dubbed “Laniakea,” which means “immense heaven” in Hawaiian.
The Milky Way resides in the outskirts of one such supercluster, whose extent has for the first time been carefully mapped using these new techniques. This so-called Laniakea Supercluster is 500 million light-years in diameter and contains the mass of one hundred million billion Suns spread across 100,000 galaxies.
This study also clarifies the role of the Great Attractor, a gravitational focal point in intergalactic space that influences the motion of our Local Group of galaxies and other galaxy clusters.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-laniakea-newly-galactic-supercluster-home.html#jCp
Half of all exoplanet host stars are binaries
The NASA Kepler Space Telescope has confirmed about 1000 exoplanets, as well as thousands more stars considered “Kepler objects of interest”, dubbed KOIs – stars that could possibly host planets.
Until now, there has been an unanswered question about exoplanet host stars; how many host stars are binaries? Binary stars have long been known to be commonplace – about half the stars in the sky are believed to consist of two stars orbiting each other. So, are stars with planets equally likely to have a companion star, or do companion stars affect the formation of planets?
A team of astronomers, led by Dr. Elliott Horch, Southern Connecticut State University, have shown that stars with exoplanets are just as likely to have a binary companion: that is, 40% to 50% of the host stars are actually binary stars. As Dr. Horch said, “It’s interesting and exciting that exoplanet systems with stellar companions turn out to be much more common than was believed even just a few years ago.”
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-09-exoplanet-host-stars-binaries.html#jCp
