Astro Blog

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/14/science/enceladus-moon-cyanide-life-saturn.html By Kenneth Chang , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Scientists have detected a poison among the spray of molecules emanating from a small moon of Saturn. That adds to existing intrigue about the possibility of life there. The poison is hydrogen cyanide, a colorless gas that is deadly to many Earth creatures. But it could have played a key role in chemical reactions that created the ingredients that set the stage for the advent of life. ...Mr. Peter and his collaborators, Tom Nordheim and Kevin Hand of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, reported their findings in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Nature Astronomy.... 

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/protecting-power-grids-from-space-weather By Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Activity from the Sun, such as  solar flares , can cause fluctuations in Earth’s geomagnetic field that send electrical currents flowing through power grids. These  geomagnetically induced currents  (GICs) can cause problems ranging from temporary voltage instability to widespread blackouts to reduced life spans for transformers. It is therefore important to develop effective mitigation strategies that protect against GIC-induced power disruptions while maintaining power to consumers. Suggested solutions have included installing equipment such as capacitors to block GICs and making changes to network configurations.  Mac Manus et al .  worked with the energy company Transpower New Zealand Ltd. to test four mitigation strategies that could be used throughout the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The team did this by ...modeling potential mitigation responses. ...Work

https://www.science.org/content/article/astronomers-stunned-six-planet-system-frozen-time By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: Astronomers have discovered a highly unusual planetary system ...six planets, all bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, a variety that is absent in our Solar System but common across the Milky Way. Moreover, all of the planets orbit in rhythmic harmony, which suggests the system has remained undisturbed since its formation billions of years ago. The brightness of the star, its relative proximity to Earth, and its six orbiting oddities could make the system a perfect laboratory for studying the formation of these planets, known as sub-Neptunes. ...the study, published today in  Nature . The planets’ orbits are all tighter than Mercury’s. ...a mysterious [size] gap persists: Planets between 1.5 and two Earth diameters seem almost entirely absent and astronomers are eager to know why. ...The new system’s discovery involved two space telescopes, multiple grou

https://www.science.org/content/article/cosmic-blast-seared-earth-s-atmosphere-2-billion-light-years-away By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: On 9 October 2022, for 7 minutes, high energy photons from a gigantic explosion 1.9 billion light-years away toasted one side of Earth as never before observed. The event, called a gamma ray burst (GRB), was 70 times brighter than the previous record holder. ...It also ionized atoms across the ionosphere, which spans from 50 to 1000 kilometers in altitude, researchers say. The findings highlight the faint but real risk of a closer burst destroying Earth’s protective ozone layer.... See also New York Times article A Supernova ‘Destroyed’ Some of Earth’s Ozone for a Few Minutes in 2022 .

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/lucy-mission-flies-by-asteroid-dinkinesh-finds-a-little-surprise By EMILY LAKDAWALLA , Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: On November 1st, the Lucy mission zipped past the tiny asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh and discovered that it was actually a binary. ...While the probe caught a view of the Dinkinesh's small satellite in the one of the first images of the flyby, the mission turned as it flew by and captured another view from a different angle. That new perspective revealed that the little asteroidal moon is actually a  contact binary , meaning it's made of two objects in contact with one another. This is the first contact binary asteroid moon discovered. Read more details on  NASA's website ....

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-embarks-biggest-3d-map-universe By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: The European Space Agency (ESA) today  released the first pictures of galaxies  taken by its new space telescope, Euclid, which aims to help researchers understand the dark components that make up 95% of the universe. ...the Perseus Cluster..., one of the most massive structures in the universe, shows 1000 of its galaxies 240 million light-years from Earth, as well as 100,000 more distant ones, some as far away as 10 billion light-years. Over its 6-year mission, Euclid, launched in July, is  expected to take 30,000 such images , cataloging 1 billion galaxies across one-third of the sky. Researchers will use them to create the biggest 3D map of the universe, spanning three-quarters of its history....

https://eos.org/articles/the-moon-is-even-older-than-scientists-thought By Matt Hrodey , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Thanks to one of the slowest-ticking clocks in the universe, scientists have determined the Moon is about 40 million years older than previously thought. That means the Earth was a young 100 million years old when an object about the size of Mars slammed into it, slinging magma out into Earth’s orbit. ...As the Moon’s mantle cooled, it formed tiny zircon crystals, ...sometimes contain other elements, such as uranium ...can be used to date when the crystal originally formed, going back billions of years, if necessary. ...the researchers obtained lunar dust collected by Apollo 17 in 1972 and analyzed the tiny zircon crystals and uranium contained inside. ...Radioactive isotopes of uranium (such as Uranium-238) contain unstable combinations of protons and neutrons in their nuclei and will eventually break down into lead... Scientists determined the age of the Moon by counting the pr

https://eos.org/articles/five-martian-mysteries-that-have-scientists-scratching-their-heads By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: . 1. Why Is the Southern Hemisphere So Bulgy? 2. Where Has All the Water Gone? 3. Why Is Mars an Ice Ball? 4. Is There Methane? 5. How Much Does the Planet Wobble? ....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/space-junk-debris-removal/ Source:   The Washington Post Editoria Board Excerpt: ...it turns out that the orbits along which rockets fly and from which satellites beam internet connectivity to Earth are a limited resource — and they’re becoming more crowded every day. The Federal Communications Commission last month issued the first-ever fine for what’s known as space junk, against the Dish Network. The satellite television company failed to dispose properly of one of its satellites, leaving it at a lower orbit than it promised when securing its license. What’s remarkable isn’t the transgression, but the penalty. Today, countries and companies alike sending objects into space are mostly held to standards lower than the average kindergartner. They’re allowed to make a mess, and they’re not really required to pick up after themselves. ...About 8,000 active satellites move through low Earth orbit. Their trajectory can be adjuste

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03271-4 By Alexandra Witze , Nature.  Excerpt: A meteorite that slammed into Mars in September 2021 has rewritten what scientists know about the planet’s interior. By analysing the seismic energy that vibrated through the planet after the impact, researchers have discovered a layer of molten rock that envelops Mars’s liquid-metal core. The finding, reported today in two papers in  Nature 1 , 2 , means that the Martian core is smaller than previously thought. It also resolves some lingering questions about how the red planet formed and evolved over billions of years. The discovery comes from NASA’s InSight mission,  which landed a craft with a seismometer on Mars’s surface . Between 2018 and 2022, that instrument  detected hundreds of ‘marsquakes’ shaking the planet . Seismic waves produced by quakes or impacts can slow down or speed up depending on what types of material they are travelling through, so seismologists can measure the waves’ pass

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/19/webb-telescope-discovers-intense-jet-stream-in-jupiters-atmosphere By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a fast-moving jet stream in Jupiter’s atmosphere that is blowing twice as fast as the visible cloud layers below it, creating wind shears that far exceed anything seen on Earth. The high-speed jet stream, which is traveling at 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) and is more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide, sits over Jupiter’s equator, 15 to 30 miles (25 to 50 kilometers) above the main cloud deck familiar from optical photos. ...winds in the visible cloud layer blow at about 180 mph (250 km/hour). This means that for every kilometer above these visible clouds, the wind speed increases by 7 to 10 kilometers per hour, according to Ricardo Hueso, lead author of a paper describing the findings published today in the journal  Nature Astronomy ....

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi4639 By ANDREW FALLE ,  EWAN WRIGHT ,  AARON BOLEY , AND  MICHAEL BYERS , Science.  Abstract: The occupation of Earth orbits by large constellations of satellites has received considerable attention in recent years. About 4500 Starlink and 630 OneWeb satellites are on orbit as of July 2023 ( 1 ), but this is only the beginning. Recent filings for radio spectrum with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) suggest that a dramatic increase in satellite numbers is possible, much more than the tens of thousands often reported. Constellations much larger than SpaceX’s Starlink have been filed, including a 337,320-satellite constellation named Cinnamon-937 that was filed in September 2021. By treating orbital space as an unlimited resource, humanity is creating serious safety and longterm sustainability challenges to the use of low Earth orbit (LEO), including science conducted from space and the ground. The ITU filings are the warning,

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66974738 By Jonathan Amos , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Jupiter-sized "planets" free-floating in space, unconnected to any star, have been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). What's intriguing about the discovery is that these objects appear to be moving in pairs. Astronomers are currently struggling to explain them. The telescope observed about 40 pairs in a fabulously detailed new survey of the famous Orion Nebula. They've been nicknamed Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or "JuMBOs" for short. ..."Gas physics suggests you shouldn't be able to make objects with the mass of Jupiter on their own, and we know single planets can get kicked out from star systems. But how do you kick out pairs of these things together? Right now, we don't have an answer. It's one for the theoreticians," the European Space Agency's (Esa) senior science adviser told BBC News.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/01/realestate/nasa-homes-moon-3-d-printing.html By Debra Kamin , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...NASA is going to build houses on the moon — ones that can be used not just by astronauts but ordinary civilians as well. They believe that by 2040, Americans will have their first subdivision in space. Living on Mars isn’t far behind. Some in the scientific community say NASA’s timeline is overly ambitious, particularly before a proven success with a new lunar landing. But seven NASA scientists interviewed for this article all said that a 2040 goal for lunar structures is attainable if the agency can continue to hit their benchmarks. The U.S. space agency will blast a 3-D printer up to the moon and then build structures, layer by additive layer, out of a specialized lunar concrete created from the rock chips, mineral fragments and dust that sits on the top layer of the moon’s cratered surface and billows in poisonous clouds whenever disturbed — a moonshot of

https://eos.org/agu-news/oceans-of-opportunity By Caryl-Sue Micalizio , Eos/AGU.   Our solar system’s ocean worlds—planets and moons covered in ice-crusted oceans—are weird, wonderful, and ripe for exploration. [Here are a series of articles] Uranus: A Time to Boldly Go by Kimberly Cartier; Marine Science Goes to Space by Damond Benningfield on how ocean worlds are redefining what constitutes a habitable zone and how missions in development, like JUICE and Europa Clipper, are relying on terrestrial deep-sea scientific advances to look for oceanic activity that’s out of this world. ...older missions are still contributing to the discourse, as archival  Cassini data helped scientists identify phosphorus —the rarest element necessary for life as we know it—on Enceladus. ...Erik Klemetti explores Cryovolcanism’s Song of Ice and Fire .... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-delivers-bounty-asteroid-samples-earth By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: ...today, after detaching from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, a capsule carrying asteroid samples descended gently by parachute before touching down in the Utah desert. The cupful of pebbles and grit it delivered—the culmination of 7 years of effort and $1 billion of expense—is only the third sample of an asteroid ever returned to Earth, and it’s the largest haul of extraterrestrial material NASA has collected since the Apollo Moon missions. ...In 2020, Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned some 5 grams of material from Ryugu, another carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid, which was thought to be relatively dry. Instead, it appears to have been fully altered by water. “We were all terribly wrong about Ryugu,” says Edward Young, a cosmochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles. ...If they are wrong about Bennu, it will be the opposite mistake. Remote observations

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg4155 By SAMANTHA K. TRUMBO  AND  MICHAEL E. BROWN , Science.  Excerpt: [Editor's summary:] Europa, an icy moon of Jupiter, has a subsurface ocean beneath a crust of water ice. Solid carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) has previously been observed on its surface, but the source was unknown. Two teams analyzed infrared spectroscopy of Europa from the James Webb Space Telescope to investigate the CO 2  source. Trumbo and Brown found that the CO 2  is concentrated in a region with geology that indicates transport of material to the surface from within the moon, and they discuss the implications for the composition of Europa’s internal ocean. Villanueva  et al . also identified an internal origin of the CO 2  and measured its  12 C/ 13 C isotope ratio. They searched for plumes of volatile material breaching the surface but found a lower activity than earlier observations. Together, these studies demonstrate that there is a source of carbon within Europa

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/science/jupiter-comet-flashes.html By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Ko Arimatsu, an astronomer at Kyoto University in Japan, received an intriguing email... An amateur astronomer in his country had spotted a bright flash in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Dr. Arimatsu, who runs an  observation program  to study the outer solar system using backyard astronomy equipment, put out a call for more information. Six more reports of the Aug. 28 flash — which, according to Dr. Arimatsu, is one of the brightest ever recorded on the giant gas planet — came in from Japanese skywatchers. Flashes like these are caused by asteroids or comets from the edges of our solar system that impact Jupiter’s atmosphere. “Direct observation of these bodies is virtually impossible, ...,” Dr. Arimatsu wrote.... But Jupiter’s gravity lures in these objects, which eventually slam into the planet, “making it a unique and invaluable tool for studying them directly,” he said. .

https://www.science.org/content/article/peak-solar-activity-arriving-sooner-expected-reaching-levels-not-seen-20-years By ZACK SAVITSKY , Science.  Excerpt: In 2019, as the Sun approached a minimum in its 11-year cycle of magnetic activity, a dozen scientists assembled for a traditional exercise: forecasting the next peak. Now, a few years into the Sun’s resurgence, it’s becoming clear that the official prediction from the panel, convened by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the International Space Environment Service (ISES), missed the mark. The Sun’s activity has already surpassed the forecast, reaching levels not seen in 20 years, and solar maximum may arrive within the next year, months ahead of its presumed schedule.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/india-makes-history-landing-spacecraft-near-moon-s-south-pole By SANJAY KUMAR , Science.  Excerpt: “India is on the Moon!” declared Sreedhara Somanath, chair of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), today to a packed mission control room. At 6:04 p.m. local time, the Chandrayaan-3 mission softly deposited the Vikram lander on the Moon’s surface, making India the fourth nation to succeed at the task after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. India also becomes the first nation to land near the lunar south pole, an uncharted territory thought to contain frozen water that could support future human exploration.... 

https://eos.org/articles/subsurface-oceans-could-boost-exoplanet-habitability By  Javier Barbuzano , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A group of researchers led by planetary scientist  Lujendra Ojha  of Rutgers University crunched the numbers to reveal that our galaxy is likely brimming with planets hosting subsurface oceans like those on  Enceladus ,  Europa , and  Ganymede . “Before we started to consider this subsurface water, it was estimated that around one rocky planet [orbiting] every 100 stars would have liquid water,” Ojha said. “The new model shows that if the conditions are right, this could approach one planet per star.”... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-mud-cracks-mars-point-conditions-favorable-life By Phil Jacobs, Science.  Excerpt: ...the discovery of distinctive mud cracks on the planet’s surface suggest ancient Mars cycled through sustained wet and dry seasons for millions of years. Not only would the climate have been habitable, scientists say, but the cycling might have also given the basic chemistry of life a boost. The discovery, reported today in Nature, is  compelling evidence for an Earth-like climate on early Mars .... the Curiosity rover has discovered patterns of hexagon-shaped cracks in ancient rocks that add to the evidence for a sustained warm climate. They resemble patterns found on Earth in places like Death Valley, where they only form after years of wet-dry cycling.... 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-mission-update-voyager-2-communications-pause By Calla Cofield, Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  Excerpt: ... Voyager 2  is located more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) from Earth...A series of planned commands sent to NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft July 21 inadvertently caused the antenna to point 2 degrees away from Earth. As a result, Voyager 2 [was] unable to receive commands or transmit data back to Earth. The agency’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar “shout” more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normall

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-snaps-highly-detailed-infrared-image-of-actively-forming-stars   By NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) .  Excerpt: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “antics” of a pair of actively forming young stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in high-resolution near-infrared light. ...They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars. The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. Much of this material was shot out from those stars as they repeatedly ingest and eject the gas and dust...over thousands of years. When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. ...The stars’ more recent ejections appear in a th

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/spot-venuss-creeping-cusps-at-solar-conjunction By Bob King, Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: With Venus approaching inferior conjunction in August, here’s a foolproof way to follow its thinning crescent as the planet transitions from Evening Star to Morning Star. ...Venus currently shines about 25° east of the Sun and sets about 45 minutes after sundown. On August 13th the two bodies will be in conjunction and rise and set together. For about a week before and after that date, Venus will be difficult-to-impossible to see with the naked eye because of interference from solar glare but remain visible in a telescope if you know exactly where to look. The orbit of Venus is tipped 3.4° relative to the plane of the ecliptic [Earth's orbit plane]. At inferior conjunction, when the two planets are closest, Venus can pass up to 8.4° north or south of the Sun. If Venus lies at or close to either one of its  nodes  — the two points where it intersects

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2023/webb-detects-water-vapor-in-rocky-planet-forming-zone By NASA.  Excerpt: Water is essential for life as we know it. However, scientists debate how it reached the Earth and whether the same processes could seed rocky exoplanets orbiting distant stars. New insights may come from the planetary system PDS 70, located 370 light-years away. The star hosts both an inner disk and outer disk of gas and dust, separated by a 5 billion-mile-wide (8 billion kilometer) gap, and within that gap are two known gas-giant planets. New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) have detected water vapor in the system’s inner disk, at distances of less than 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. (The Earth orbits 93 million miles from our Sun.) This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or mo

https://eos.org/articles/magnetic-tangles-drive-solar-wind By  atthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Though the  effects  of solar wind are well documented, what  causes  it has been a mystery for more than 50 years. Now, thanks to a solar close-up, some researchers think the energy behind the flow of particles comes from the Sun’s own magnetic fields snapping together. The process, known as reconnection, may illuminate not only solar wind but winds from other stars as well as the behavior of comets and planetary atmospheres. In part to solve the solar wind mystery—and perhaps learn ways to spot solar storms before they form—researchers developed NASA’s  Parker Solar Probe , which launched in 2018 and has been flying in ever-closer orbits to the Sun. ...Reconnection occurs in plasmas when magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions cancel out, rapidly dumping their energy into the surrounding electrons and ions. A simplified picture would be taking two bar magnets pointed in oppos

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/perseverance-finds-complex-organics-not-life-on-mars/ By Colin Stuart, Sky & Telescope Magazine.  Excerpt: Planetary scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Perseverance rover have found signs of organic molecules on Mars, hinting that the planet had a more complex geochemical cycle in the past than previously thought. If true, it shows that the building blocks of life have been present on the Red Planet for around billions of years. These new findings, published in  Nature , come from examining the floor of Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometer- (28-mile-) wide impact basin just north of the Martian equator. NASA picked it as Perseverance’s landing site due to geological signs that an ancient river flooded into the crater some 2.5 billion years ago.... 

https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101893676/aomawa-shields-on-searching-for-life-in-space-and-at-home KQED podcast.  Excerpt: Does it matter if life exists on another planet? To UC Irvine astrobiologist Aomawa Shields it matters in the same way that a mountain matters and screams to be climbed: not knowing is unbearable. Shields has devoted her career to studying the climate and habitability of exoplanets to further the search for extraterrestrial life. She’s also one of very few Black women in a field dominated by white men and a classically trained actor. We talk to her about her journey as a scientist and an artist and her new book “Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe.”... See also TED Talk,  How we'll find life on other planets  

https://www.science.org/content/article/amateur-astronomer-may-worlds-top-supernova-hunter By Dennis Normile.  Excerpt: Amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki is one of the most prolific supernova hunters of all time. ...he drove to his private observatory in the hills above his home in Yamagata, Japan, 290 kilometers north of Tokyo. ...SN 2023ixf is his 172nd supernova, a total topped only by U.S.-based Tim Puckett, whose private observatory in Georgia has bagged at least 360 supernovae with the help of a worldwide network of volunteers who manually examine his images. Itagaki, by contrast, works alone. He “is one of the most prolific supernova observers in the world,” says Andrew Howell, an astronomer at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara.... 

https://www.fraknoi.com/astronomy/pahs-found-in-distant-galaxy/ By Andrew Fraknoi.  Excerpt: Astronomers working with the Webb Space Telescope have found a fortunate alignment in the sky that has enabled them to detect the faint signal of a complex building block of life just 1.5 billion years after the origin of the universe. The discovery of PAH’s (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) so soon after the Big Bang is another powerful demonstration that assembling the ingredients for the chemistry of life is a process that began in the vast clouds of raw material between the stars. And, it seems, it began quite quickly after the first generations of stars produced the required elements.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/long-sought-hum-of-gravitational-waves-from-giant-black-holes-heard-for-first-time By Adam Mann, Science.  Excerpt: By turning networks of dead stars into galaxy-size gravitational wave detectors, radio astronomers have tuned into the slowly undulating swells in spacetime thought to arise from pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that are about to collide. In a simultaneous announcement today, five separate international teams said that after nearly 20 years of effort they had found evidence for these gravitational waves. They are far longer than the waves  first captured  by ground-based detectors in 2015, which emanate from collisions of star-size objects. The findings not only open up a new window in gravitational wave astronomy, but will also help researchers answer questions about the origin and evolution of SMBHs, objects that sit at the center of galaxies and weigh as much as billions of Suns.... 

https://eos.org/articles/nearby-volcano-planet-likely-fueled-by-tidal-heating By Javier Barbuzano , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: An unusual planetary dance has produced an Earth-sized exoplanet brimming with volcanoes, likely furnished with an atmosphere, and maybe even containing water on its surface. Astronomers discovered this odd world orbiting a  red dwarf star  right in our galactic neighborhood—just 90 light-years away. The exoplanet, known as LP 791-18 d, orbits a red dwarf already known to host two other planets:  LP 791-18 b , a scorched, rocky world orbiting extremely close to the star, and  LP 791-18 c , a sub-Neptune 7 times more massive than Earth made of gas or icy material. The finding comes after a group of researchers led by astrophysicist  Björn Benneke  of the Université de Montréal in Canada used NASA’s recently retired  Spitzer Space Telescope  to take a closer look at the system....

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-05987-9 ]  By Frank Postberg ,  Yasuhito Sekine ,  Fabian Klenner ,  Christopher R. Glein ,  Zenghui Zou ,  Bernd Abel ,  Kento Furuya ,  Jon K. Hillier ,  Nozair Khawaja ,  Sascha Kempf ,  Lenz Noelle ,  Takuya Saito ,  Juergen Schmidt ,  Takazo Shibuya ,  Ralf Srama  &  Shuya Tan , Nature.  Excerpt: Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a global ice-covered water ocean 2 , 3 . The Cassini spacecraft investigated the composition of the ocean by analysis of material ejected into space by the moon’s cryovolcanic plume 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 . The analysis of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer 10  enabled inference of major solutes in the ocean water (Na + , K + , Cl – , HCO 3 – , CO 3 2– ).... Here we present Cassini’s Cosmic Dust Analyzer mass spectra of ice grains emitted by Enceladus that show the presence of sodium phosphates. ...of the six elements—C, H, N, O, P and S—that are generally considered to be critical ingredien

https://eos.org/articles/saturns-shiny-rings-may-be-pretty-young By  Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Data from NASA’s Cassini mission showed how fast dust has been pelting the Saturnian system, revealing that for the rings to have remained as shiny and dust-free as they are, they can be only as much as 400 million years old, much younger than the planet itself. ...The Sun and its planets formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and many of the planets’ moons, including ours, followed not long after. Astronomers initially thought that  Saturn’s rings  formed during that early dynamical period, when large collisions were common. ...The rings’ orbits and compositions support the idea they are old. ...Measurements of the rainfall rate and the total mass of the rings from NASA’s  Cassini spacecraft , which orbited Saturn for 13 years, suggested that the rings must be far younger than the planet; otherwise, they would have disappeared already. Cassini also revealed that the rings

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/06/07/parker-solar-probe-flies-into-the-fast-solar-wind-and-finds-its-source/ By  Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown close enough to the sun to detect the fine structure of the solar wind close to where it is generated at the sun’s surface, revealing details that are lost as the wind exits the corona as a uniform blast of charged particles. It’s like seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting you in the face. In a paper to be published this week in the journal  Nature , a team of scientists led by Stuart D. Bale, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and James Drake of the University of Maryland-College Park, report that the Parker Solar Probe has detected streams of high-energy particles that match the supergranulation flows within coronal holes, which suggests that these are the regions where the so-called “fast” solar wind originates. ...T