Science Through Shadows: How Astronomical Alignments Reveal the Universe - NASA Science (.gov)

After being born of mostly just hydrogen and helium, a scant 14-ish billion years later the Universe is full of weird planets of wildly varying makes, shapes, and sizes. Well, maybe not shapes, because they're all pretty rotund – it's in the definition of planet. Yet some are truly alien, including oddballs as dense as iron and teeny-tiny 'next door neighbors' that make our modest Venus seem like a giant. Upping the alien ante, astronomers have just announced a suspected exoplanet like no other entity, either in astronomy or in legend: a "phoenix planet" that arose not from its own ashes, but from those of its burned-out mother star. Artist's illustration of the second-generation planet that has formed around white dwarf HS 0209+0832. (Dr Snehalata Sahu/University of Warwick)After nearly three decades of uncertainty, a team led by researchers from the University of Warwick has finally characterized what may be the first second-generation planet ever detected around a white dwarf, one named HS 0209+0832 and located only 270 light-years away. White dwarfs are the cooling cores of formerly Sun-like stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel.

An artist's impression of the second-generation planet orbiting HS 0209+0832, the first such planet to be found orbiting a white dwarf. A star’s explosive death is often apocalyptic for its closest planets. In our solar system, the sun’s expansion into a red giant about five billion years from now will spell doom for Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Earth. But a dead star isn’t only capable of destruction. Astronomers suspect that gravity from highly magnetized, fast-spinning neutron stars known as pulsars can sometimes assemble enough material to form second-generation planets. But for the first time, scientists have detected a potential planet birthed from a white dwarf—and it may only be the first of more to come

Model and observation: Left, a 3D model of an Orion Bar analog shows density and chemical processes. Red contours mark H₂ formation; blue contours show C⁺ recombining to C. Right: James Webb data of the Orion Bar, with the modeled region marked. Credit: Brandt A. L. Gaches/ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, PDRs4ALL ERS Team, Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb) How do young stars reshape the clouds from which they are born? A new high-resolution 3D model developed by an international team led by Dr Brandt Gaches from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows how the uneven structure of stellar nurseries creates shadows that alter their chemistry and influence the infrared emission observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The model has now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A growing outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo is drawing attention to a broader problem in global health: how to prepare for dangerous diseases that appear only rarely but can still cause deadly outbreaks. In a review article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Boston University professor Nancy Sullivan argues that outbreak preparedness needs to extend beyond the infectious diseases that receive the most attention.