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Someday, rockets from Earth may be launched towards worlds beyond our solar system. But will these rockets be able to reach their destination within a human lifetime? Ramaswamy and Giovinazzi simulate rocket launches to an Earth-like exoplanet to uncover whether it's physically possible to complete the journey within a lifetime.

Life requires many things, including a hospitable temperature, elements, and energy. Here the authors utilize Newton's laws of physics and information relating a star's luminosity and temperature to determine the minimum and maximum masses and luminosities of planets and stars that would support life as we know it. This work can be used to determine the likelihood of a planet being able to support life based on attributes we can measure from here on Earth.

This assessed the hypothesis that stars in wide binary systems are chemically homogeneous because of their shared origin. Abundances of the HIP 34407/HIP 34426 binary were obtained by analyzing high-resolution spectra of the system. Discrepancies found in the system’s elemental abundances might be an indicator of the presence of rocky planets around this star. Thus, the differences found in chemical composition might demonstrate limitations in the assumptions of chemical tagging.

Here the authors conducted a photometric analysis of Supernova (SN) 20234jvj. Through generating a light curve, they determined SN 2023jvj to be a Type Ia supernova located approximately 1.246e8 parasecs away from Earth.

Observing transients like supernovae, which have short-lived brightness variations, helps astronomers understand cosmic phenomena. This study analyzed transient 2023jri, hypothesizing it was a Type IIb supernova. By collecting and analyzing data over four weeks, including light and color curves, they confirmed its classification and provided additional insights into this less-studied supernova type.

Supernovas are powerful explosions that result from gravitational collapse of a massive star. Using photometric analysis Arora et al. set out to investigate whether 2020pni (located in galaxy UGC 9684) was a supernova. They were ultimately able to identify 2020pni as a Type II-L supernova and determine it's distance from earth.

This study compares three methods regarding their accuracy in calculating the distance between the Earth and the Sun. The hypothesis presented was that the shadow method would have the greatest mean accuracy, followed by the tube pinhole method, and finally the plate pinhole method. The results validate the hypothesis; however, further investigation would be helpful in determining effective mitigation of each method’s limitations and the effectiveness of each method in determining the distance of other light-emitting objects distant from the Earth.

Studying other galaxies can help us understand the origins of the universe. Here, the authors study a type of galaxies known as Green Peas gaining insights that could help inform our understanding of Lyman alpha emitters, one of the first types of galaxies that existed in the early universe.

In this study, the authors study features of exoplanet 189733 b. This exoplanet, or planets that orbit stars other than the Sun, is found in the HD star system. Using a DSLR camera, they constructed a high caliber exoplanet transit detection tracker to study the orbital periods, radial velocity, and photometry of 189733 b. They then compared results from their system to data collected by other high precision studies. What they found was that their system produced results supporting previously published studies. These results are exciting results from the solar system demonstrating the importance of validating radial velocity and photometry data using high-precision studies.

In this work, the authors develop an algorithm that solves the problem of efficient space travel between planets. This is a problem that could soon be of relevance as mankind continues to expand its exploration of outer space, and potentially attempt to inhabit it.