Keyword: space science

A study led from the University of Turku discovered a supernova explosion that expands our understanding of the later life stages of massive stars. 

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a Synergy Grant, named “BlackHolistic”, of 14 million Euro to a team of Dutch, British, Finnish, and Namibian astronomers to make colour movies of black holes. Researchers from the University of Turku are involved in international collaboration.

Some of the brightest objects in the sky are called blazars. They consist of a supermassive black hole feeding off material swirling around it in a disk, which can create two powerful jets perpendicular to the disk on each side. A blazar is especially bright because one of its jets of high-speed particles points straight at Earth. For decades, scientists have wondered: How do particles in these jets get accelerated to such high energies?

Researchers from the University of Turku determined geometrical parameters of a neutron star floating in the Galaxy 21,000 light years away. The finding confirms old ideas that this star precesses like a whirligig.

Researchers from Aalto University, the University of Turku and the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO were part of the international research group in taking a revolutionary picture.

Using the telescopes of the MAGIC collaboration, scientists have detected very-high-energy gamma rays from the nova eruption of the RS Ophiuchi recurrent nova on the Milky Way.  The measured radiation is up to one hundred billion times more energetic than visible light. This is the first time such intense gamma rays have been observed from a nova. The observations provide new insights into the role of nova eruptions as sources of the mysterious cosmic rays.

The satellite and its key instruments will launch in summer 2022. 

Researchers from the University of Turku found that the axis of rotation of a black hole in a binary system is tilted more than 40 degrees relative to the axis of stellar orbit. The finding challenges current theoretical models of black hole formation.

Foresail-1 is the first satellite from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space. The Centre of Excellence is studying space conditions with the aim of developing more sustainable small satellites that do not turn into space debris.