Volume 4 Issue 12, December 2020

Astronomy research in Malaysia has progressed rapidly in the last few decades, with an increasing number of enthusiastic Malaysian astronomers working together to build new research groups and observing facilities, while establishing research networks both locally and globally.

One of the giants of planetary science, H. J. Melosh, died unexpectedly on 11 September 2020 at age 73. Through his students, postdocs and collaborators, he brought a high level of physical rigour to the growing field of planetary geology.

Govind Swarup was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy and the driving force behind two innovative Indian radio telescopes. He contributed significantly to building up research institutions and promoting science education and training programs in the country.

Far-infrared polarimetric observations reveal the small-scale magnetic field structure within dense gas filaments. Gravity-induced gas flows in filaments supports a scenario in which gravitational collapse and star cluster formation occur even in the presence of relatively strong magnetic fields.

A map of the helium abundance across much of the solar corona will allow us to connect in situ solar wind measurements to their sources and improve our understanding of the origins of the solar wind.

A starburst galaxy from the peak epoch of cosmic star-formation history is found to have a significant ionizing ultraviolet emission. This finding will help better constrain the process of reionization in the early Universe.

A periodic gamma-ray signal detected from the micro-quasar SS 433 cannot be associated with its jet. Instead, a new mechanism capable of channelling most of SS 433’s kinetic power to large distances is needed to explain the observations.

Global images of helium and hydrogen emission are used to directly derive the helium abundance out to 2.2R_⊙. The helium abundance is shaped by the large-scale coronal magnetic field. Helium is almost completely depleted near the equator in the quiet Sun.

Observations of the X8.2 solar flare, which happened on 2017 September 10, could spatially resolve the distribution of the energetic electrons along the reconnection current sheet. More than 99% of them are concentrated at the bottom of the current sheet, not at the reconnection X point.

LTT 9779 b is Neptune-sized planet rotating around its star with a period of 0.79 days and an equilibrium temperature of 2,000 K. It is not clear how it retained its atmospheric envelope, which contains ~10% of H/He, as it should have been photoevaporated by now.

A large streamer of infalling material joins the dense core with the accretion disk around a young protostar, where the streamer is linked to disk structures. This finding demonstrates the importance of a big-picture viewpoint when studying small-scale accretion features.

Stellar intensity interferometry (SII) is undergoing a revival. Here, data from the four 12 m optical reflectors of the VERITAS array are correlated post facto to determine the angular diameter of two stars to a high precision, laying the groundwork for SII at future large Cherenkov arrays.

Conditions in an accretion burst around a high-mass young stellar object (HMYSO) were sufficient to pump two species previously not known to maser. HDO and HNCO were found to trace spiral-arm features in the accretion flow onto the HMYSO.

Ten years of gamma-ray data reveal emission in the vicinity of the microquasar SS 433 that is co-spatial with an interstellar gas enhancement and varies periodically at the precessional period of SS 433, challenging existing theoretical models.

The detection of Lyman continuum emission with a high escape fraction from a low-mass clumpy galaxy at z = 1.42, in a redshift range where previously no similar sources were detected, opens up a new window to constrain the shape of the ionization spectrum.

Far-infrared polarimetric observations reveal a transition parallel to the gas flow in the orientation of magnetic field lines in the Serpens South molecular cloud, allowing gravitational collapse to occur even in the presence of strong magnetic fields.

The BICEP Array will bring a new level of sensitivity to observations of cosmic microwave background polarization patterns on large angular scales, says Clem Pryke on behalf of the BICEP/Keck Collaboration.