Webb reveals warped structure in nearby TW Hydrae’s protoplanetary disk

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers obtained high-contrast coronagraphic images of the protoplanetary disk around the young, nearby star TW Hydrae. Results of the observational campaign, published July 27 on the preprint server arXiv, shed more light on the nature of this disk.

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DESI side project reveals the spectra of disintegrated exoplanets

Using spectral data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), astronomers have gained some of the clearest evidence yet that white dwarf stars are accreting debris from disintegrating exoplanets. Captured while DESI was unable to study its primary targets: distant galaxies, the results provide unprecedented insights into the chemical makeup of rocky exoplanets, revealing compositions […]

Solar wind stirs Mars’ upper atmosphere, boosting ion loss to space

Our sun constantly releases a stream of high-speed charged particles, known as the solar wind. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have a strong global magnetic field to shield its atmosphere from this flow. As a result, the solar wind can interact directly with Mars’ upper atmosphere and gradually strip atmospheric particles into space.

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Laying odds on the potential for Martian water near future landing zones

We know Mars has water ice in its polar regions, but astronauts (and their solar-powered equipment!) would much rather experience life closer to Mars’ equator. As NASA looks toward landing humans on the red planet, the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) is mapping where water should and shouldn’t be found and using statistics to quantify its […]

Moonquakes could reveal ice buried beneath lunar south polar craters

Finding water on the moon may only be a matter of detecting the right vibrations.

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Homing in on the X-ray sky with eROSITA’s second data release

The German eROSITA consortium (eROSITA-DE), which includes the University of Bonn and is led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), has released its second major public data set, the “eROSITA Data Release 2” (DR2).

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ELT’s spectrograph could ‘sniff out’ biosignatures on other worlds

Before any major telescope commissioning, there are dozens of papers that attempt to define what we can expect from it. We’re starting to see some come through for the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which hopefully will get a more imaginative name when the 39 m (128-foot) behemoth is officially commissioned in Chile in the 2030s. […]

Curiosity Blog, Sols 4961-4967: Approaching a break in the rock record?

Curiosity spent the week continuing to climb her way through the layers of Mount Sharp, exploring the sedimentary rock strip chart of Martian history. The rover has reached a layer where the science team had spotted a possible “erosional supersurface” by analyzing orbital data alongside images of the layers in the buttes above us.

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A discarded SpaceX rocket is on a high-speed collision course with the moon

A drifting SpaceX rocket is on a collision course with the moon after launching a pair of lunar landers more than a year ago.

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Japan probe made closest-ever asteroid flyby: space agency

A Japanese probe flew 400 meters (1,312 feet) from a near-Earth asteroid this month, marking the closest approach ever recorded for such a mission, the space agency said.

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First AI-driven telescope goes stargazing

Every night, astronomers must carefully assess changing weather, the intensity of moonlight and shifting atmospheric conditions before deciding where to point a telescope. It’s a constant balancing act designed to squeeze as much science as possible from every precious hour beneath dark skies. Now, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and Fermilab scientists have developed a […]

Surprising boiling behavior in liquids could advance future space missions

When astronauts travel deeper into space, every drop of fuel becomes critical, and keeping those fuels stable for months or even years is one of the biggest engineering challenges facing future missions. Now, University of Florida researchers have uncovered a surprising behavior in boiling liquids that could help solve that challenge.

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Astronomers finally measure the full size of the largest known galaxy

Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy’s outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars. The paper was posted […]

Probing binary stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud with the JWST

The formation and evolution of individual stars in a galaxy shape the evolution of the galaxy itself. Stars and stellar remnants make up the vast majority of a galaxy’s mass, so it’s not surprising that the stellar population affects the evolution of galaxies. In the Milky Way’s disk and bulge, stars and dead stars make […]

A thermal camera trick could let LIGO see twice as far

There’s a nice kind of irony buried in this story: One of the most sensitive instruments ever built, capable of measuring distortions smaller than the width of a proton, has been quietly held back by something as mundane as heat. And the fix, it turns out, is not some exotic new sensor but a thermal […]