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A statistical analysis of microlensing data from 2002–07 reveals that stars in the Milky Way are orbited by planets as a rule, rather than an exception.

An inactive black hole has been found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, bound into a binary star system. Having experienced a negligible ‘kick’ during formation, the existence of this black hole has strong implications for black hole-–black hole mergers.

The results of the search for long-timescale microlensing events among the light curves of nearly 80 million stars located in the Large Magellanic Cloud indicate that there are no massive black holes in the Milky Way halo.

Observations of eight long-period, late-type eclipsing-binary systems composed of cool, giant stars are used to determine a distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2.2 per cent, providing a base for a determination of the Hubble constant to an accuracy of 3 per cent.

A previously unidentified class of variable stars has been found in OGLE survey data, characterized by periodic brightness variations on ~30-min timescales, amplitudes of ~0.3 mag and temperatures of ~30,000 K. They are potentially evolved low-mass stars.

Long-term pre- and post-eruption observations of the classical nova V1213 Centauri reveal that its progenitor was a dwarf nova and that the mass-transfer rate increased considerably as a result of the nova explosion.

The authors present a spectrophotometric and hydrodynamical study of supernova OGLE-2014-SN-073, which had remarkably high inferred ejecta mass and energy, potentially higher than can be explained with canonical core-collapse neutrino-driven explosions.

Multi-epoch observations of a supernova associated with a γ-ray burst reveal spectral features at extremely high expansion velocities within the first day after the burst, indicative of a choked jet.

Accretion onto the surface of a white dwarf typically generates supersoft X-ray emission and broad emission lines due to nuclear fusion. ASASSN-16oh exhibits no visible broad lines, implying there is no surface fusion, and instead, a belt around the dwarf called a spreading layer is the source of the supersoft X-ray emission.

The first stars and their immediate successors should be found today in the central regions (bulges) of galaxies; old, metal-poor stars have now been found in the Milky Way bulge, including one star with an iron abundance about 10,000 times lower than that of the Sun without noticeable carbon enhancement, making it possibly the oldest known star in the Galaxy.

In an analysis of a large sample of microlensing events, a few suggest the existence of Earth-mass free-floating planets, but only the expected number of Jupiter-mass free-floating objects were detected.

The astronomical event GW170817, detected in gravitational and electromagnetic waves, is used to determine the expansion rate of the Universe, which is consistent with and independent of existing measurements.