Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Astrophysical Journal was founded in 1895 by American astronomers George Ellery Hale and James Edward Keeler. It launched under the full title The Astrophysical Journal: An International Review of Spectroscopy and Astronomical Physics.
The Astrophysical Journal Letters is a peer-reviewed journal focused on the rapid publication of high-impact astronomical research. It was established in 1967 by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, originally as Part 2 of The Astrophysical Journal, and later became a separate standalone journal.
The Astrophysical Journal moved to an open access model on the 1st of January 2022, removing subscription charges and access restrictions from previously published papers. Articles accepted after the 11th of October 2022 are published under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 license.
IOP Publishing has published The Astrophysical Journal on behalf of the American Astronomical Society since January 2009. Before that date, publication was handled by the University of Chicago Press.
The Astrophysical Journal has an acceptance rate greater than 85 percent. While high compared to journals in other scientific disciplines, this figure is typical of journals covering astronomy and astrophysics.
The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series has been published alongside the main journal since 1953. It carries longer articles that supplement the primary publication, releasing six volumes per year with two 280-page issues per volume.