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ASTRONEWS<br />
Astrobabble<br />
From asterisms to Thorne-Żytkow objects,<br />
we turn gibberish into English.<br />
WFIRST GREENLIGHT. In February, NASA officially started work on a wide-eyed follow-up to the James Webb<br />
Space Telescope. WFIRST will explore the universe in infrared, looking at dark matter, dark energy, and other Earths.<br />
SUPERMASSIVE<br />
4 million solar masses<br />
15 million miles (24 million km)<br />
INTERMEDIATE MASS<br />
10,000 solar masses<br />
Up to 37,000 miles (60,000km)<br />
Vol·ant·ids<br />
Earth’s newest meteor<br />
shower appeared for the<br />
first time last New Year’s<br />
Eve, streaming from the<br />
southern constellation<br />
Volans, the flying fish.<br />
Astronomers in New<br />
Zealand used dozens of<br />
cameras to track trajectories<br />
for 23 meteors that<br />
were also visible with the<br />
naked eye.<br />
In·fra·red<br />
ca·tas·tro·phe<br />
The sharp drop-off in<br />
brightness that supernova<br />
studies predict should<br />
happen 500 days after a<br />
star explodes. New<br />
research shows this<br />
never-actually-observed<br />
phenomenon is thwarted<br />
by radioactive elements<br />
that let type Ia supernovae<br />
shine on for years.<br />
Boost·back burn<br />
When the first stage of<br />
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket<br />
begins its return to Earth,<br />
the engines light, starting<br />
a trajectory toward an<br />
autonomous drone ship.<br />
Grid fins and additional<br />
engine burns help steer it<br />
into position.<br />
Dark black hole >><br />
Astronomers are blind to<br />
some 100 million dormant<br />
Milky Way black holes that<br />
don’t emit much observable<br />
light. But a new radio<br />
telescope search still spotted<br />
one by watching gas<br />
race around an object<br />
100,000 times more massive<br />
than the Sun. This<br />
new middleweight monster<br />
sits just 200 light-years<br />
from our galactic center.<br />
— Eric Betz,<br />
jargon@astronomy.com<br />
17 Suns across<br />
STELLAR MASS<br />
10 solar masses<br />
37 miles (60km)<br />
4.7 Earths across<br />
Rhode<br />
Island<br />
IN-BETWEENER. Astronomers know of only a few handfuls of black holes in the Milky Way — the ones<br />
that give themselves away by feeding on accretion disks. In the coming years, that sample size will grow<br />
exponentially, likely revealing for the first time “dark” black holes with intermediate sizes. ASTRONOMY: ROEN KELLY<br />
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WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 15
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