Astro Blog

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: Astronomers studying the murky center of our Milky Way Galaxy have discovered something they never expected:  a pair of young stars orbiting each other near the supermassive black hole that is our Galaxy’s dark heart . The observation—reported today in Nature Communications—comes as a surprise because astrophysicists had thought the black hole’s intense gravity would either rip the stars in such a pair apart or squash them together. But the new object, dubbed D9, shows that such a “binary” can survive, at least briefly, near the black hole, and it could help explain other mysterious objects in the vicinity. ...For many years, two teams, in California and Germany, monitored the  closest of those stars . About 20 years ago, both proved the star’s eccentric, high-speed orbit could only arise if it was circling a compact object with extreme mass—a black hole. For that work, the teams’ leaders, Reinhard Genzel of the Max Planck Institu...

By Valeriy Vasilyev et al, Science.  Editor's Summary: Solar flares are bright, transient, multiwavelength emissions from active regions on the Sun. The most intense directly observed solar flares release energies of about 10 32  erg. It is unclear whether the Sun can produce more intense flares than that or how often they might occur. Vasilyev  et al . investigated brightness measurements of 56,000 Sun-like stars observed by the Kepler space telescope. They identified almost 3000 bright stellar flares with energies of about 10 34  to 10 35  erg, which are called superflares. The occurrence rate is about one superflare per star per century. If the Sun behaves like the stars in this sample, then it could produce superflares at a similar rate. —Keith T. Smith.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5441 . 

By Jonathan O’Callaghan , The New York Times.  Excerpt: We might finally understand what’s going on inside Uranus and Neptune, and the answer is pretty surprising: They may each contain an ocean of water. ...The idea about the two ice giant planets — so-called because of the freezing conditions in which they formed — was put forward by Burkhard Militzer, a planetary scientist from the University of California, Berkeley, and was  published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . It could explain the strange magnetic fields of both worlds, which are unlike any other in the solar system....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/science/uranus-neptune-oceans.html .  See also UC Berkeley News A clue to what lies beneath the bland surfaces of Uranus and Neptune , By Robert Sanders. 

By Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In 2011, a striking black rock about the size of an apple was discovered in the Sahara desert. ...that meteorite, which has come to be known as NWA 7034, or “Black Beauty,” is different from most other meteorites: It’s a chunk of Mars. ...Tiny grains of zircon from NWA 7034 have now revealed that hydrothermal activity likely persisted in Mars’s crust 4.45 billion years ago. That’s the earliest indirect evidence of water on the Red Planet....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/martian-meteorite-points-to-ancient-hydrothermal-activity . 

By Zexian Cui et al, Science.  Summary: Between 1969 and 1976, the Apollo and Luna missions collected samples from the ...near side of the Moon—the one that always faces Earth. Observations from lunar orbit have shown that the far side has very different geology from the near side, for unknown reasons. ...In June 2024, the Chang’e-6 spacecraft landed within an impact basin on the far side of the Moon, collected samples, then brought them back to Earth. In a new Science paper , researchers present early results from analyses of a Chang’e-6 sample, which contains volcanic basalt...the volcanic eruption occurred 2.8 billion years ago....  Paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adt1093 . 

By  Jamie M. Jasinsk  et al, Nature Astronomy. Summary: A human spacecraft has only gotten close to Uranus once—in 1986, when Voyager 2 drifted past the distant planet. That flyby indicated that   Uranus was weird in several ways , which astronomers have spent decades trying to explain. Now, a new analysis in   Nature Astronomy   suggests the probe   just happened to arrive there on an off day . Voyager 2’s data indicated that Uranus had an “unusually oblique and off-centered magnetic field” with inexplicably intense electron radiation belts and a severely plasma-depleted magnetosphere,” the team behind the new work writes. But by mining old data from the mission, the scientists found evidence for a super strong solar wind that likely squished the magnetosphere just prior to the probe’s readings. This would have pushed any plasma too close to the planet to detect, and filled the radiation belts with high-energy particles. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41...

By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Geological evidence on Mars indicates that 3.6 billion years ago, an intense pulse of water carved rivers and lakes across the planet, an abrupt shift from the preceding 500-million-year era of much gentler fluvial activity. Researchers have long  puzzled over  the cause. A new study by  Buhler  shows, paradoxically, that the collapse of the Martian atmosphere and entry into a  colder  climate may have melted the polar ice cap and triggered global-scale flooding. ...In total, about 4% to 40% of the water ice could have melted, an amount of water equivalent to between 20% and 200% of the  water currently found near the surface on Mars ....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-an-ocean-sized-lake-may-have-formed-on-ancient-mars . 

By Damond Benningfield , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Earth’s future is bleak. At best, our planet will become a burned-out cinder as the Sun expands at the end of its life. At worst, it will be engulfed by the Sun, leaving no trace that it ever existed. Astronomers have found a clue as to which path Earth might follow in a star system about 4,300 light-years away. There, a rocky planet orbits the remains of a once Sun-like star at a distance similar to where Earth could park if it survives our own star’s death throes. The system “may offer a glimpse into the possible survival of planet Earth in the distant future,” according to  a new study  published in  Nature Astronomy . The system,  KMT-2020-BLG-0414L , was discovered in 2020 by the  Korea Microlensing Telescope Network , a set of three automated 1.6-meter telescopes in the Southern Hemisphere....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/earth-may-survive-the-suns-demise . 

By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Before  the northern lights  fill the night sky on Earth with their eerie neon glow, a blast of electrified gas flares up from the sun’s surface. And scientists are now getting a powerful new view of how those ejections move through the corona, the sun’s tempestuous outer atmosphere. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  unveiled the first imagery  from its newest telescope in space. Meteorologists will use pictures from the device to help them better forecast space weather, including when you can expect to see auroras. The new instrument is called the Compact Coronagraph, or CCOR-1. It launched in June aboard GOES-19, the newest of NOAA’s fleet of weather satellites. The coronagraph can continuously monitor the sun, and it will send data to scientists on the ground every 15 minutes. ...Earlier this month, NASA and NOAA  announced  that the sun had reached a peak in activity, ...

By Douglas Fox , SciAm.  Excerpt: Sixty-six million years ago a 10-kilometer-wide space rock fell out of the sky over what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. ...Yet the event’s infamous impactor was nothing compared with the asteroid that struck Earth 3.26 billion years ago, amid what scientists call the Archean eon of our planet’s 4.5-billion-year history. The Archean space rock in that impact, dubbed “S2,” was 50 to 200 times larger—big enough to blast at least 10,000 cubic kilometers of vaporized rock into the skies that then recondensed into molten droplets and rained back to Earth. Unsurprisingly, those circumstances would have been “really disastrous for early life,” says Nadja Drabon, a geologist at Harvard University. But her latest research suggests that—much like the more celebrated dino-killing space-rock impact—this vastly greater and more ancient collision also had an upside, giving Earth’s early biosphere a powerful boost. ...her scrutiny of rock laye...

By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Europa Clipper launched at 12:06 pm EDT on 14 October from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Clipper successfully deployed its solar panels and communicated with mission control once in space. ...NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft...will head to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and determine whether it’s a hospitable place for life. ...There will be 49 flybys of Europa to study the moon from pole to pole ...The craft is set to  arrive  at Jupiter in April 2030. ...Europa is one of Jupiter’s four Galilean moons. Past missions to the Jovian system discovered that Europa, along with fellow icy moons Ganymede and Callisto, have vast liquid water oceans sloshing around beneath icy shells. “ Ocean worlds  have been considered potentially habitable environments for a while,” said  Monica Vidaurri , a doctoral student in planetary modeling at Stanford University in California. “This is the first time we’re really dedicating a...

By Nathaniel Scharping , agu.  Excerpt: In 2009, NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into the Moon ...The  Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite  (LCROSS) was designed to search for frozen lunar water and other volatiles in the lunar regolith by knocking them off the Moon. ...The LCROSS impact kicked up a cloud of regolith containing plenty of water (5.6% by mass), ...But it did so in a permanently shadowed area of the Moon, leaving scientists unable to directly observe the crater after its formation. ... Fassett et al.  ...researchers ...see the LCROSS crater directly.... The LCROSS impact crater is about 22 meters across, the researchers report, slightly smaller than the LCROSS team  originally estimated . ...the volatiles themselves are young and came from outside the Moon—perhaps from comets, asteroids, or the solar wind—rather than from volcanic eruptions early in the Moon’s history. ...These data could be complemented by future missions, such ...

By Jonathan O'Callaghan , Nature.  Excerpt: Experiment shows that, in a worst-case scenario, humanity could use a nuclear explosion to save the planet from a deadly impact. A blast of X-rays from a nuclear explosion should be enough to save Earth from an incoming asteroid, according to the results of a first-of-its-kind experiment. The findings, published 1  on 23 September in  Nature Physics [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-024-02633-7 ], “showed some really amazing direct experimental evidence for how effective this technique can be”, says Dawn Graninger, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “It’s very impressive work.”  Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03128-4 . 

By Robin George Andrews , Science.  Excerpt: ...Jupiter’s moon Europa ...NASA hopes will greet its Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will begin its journey to the Jupiter system next month. ...Something extraordinary is concealed beneath the ice: a liquid saltwater ocean, potentially as clement and welcoming to life as Earth’s. ...Equipped with a battery of nine science instruments, Clipper will swoop past Europa in a series of nearly 50 ice-skimming flybys, remotely probing the ocean in hopes of finding a chemistry that could support life. ...“We’re not a life search mission. We’re a habitability mission,” says Robert Pappalardo, Clipper’s project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the mission. But even Pappalardo, a cautious scientist who is constitutionally averse to hyperbole, says finding a hint of life is “not out of the question.”...  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-spacecraft-probe-possibility-life-europa-s-salty...

https://www.mercury-messenger.org/history-culture/galileo-telescope By Shanil Virani, Astronomical Society of the Pacific - Mercury online Excerpt: Between January 7 and January 13, 1610, a series of observations was made that would forever change how we would view the cosmos. The observer detailed in this log book a discovery made using a relatively new invention at that time. The observer had discovered four small, point sources of light very close to the (giant) planet Jupiter. On January 10, one of them disappeared for a short period. The observer attributed the disappearance of the object as being hidden behind Jupiter. Given his extensive observations, he was now forced to conclude that these four points of light were orbiting Jupiter and not Earth. The observer, Galileo Galilei, and his two small pieces of glass would usher in a scientific revolution that reverberates to this day. Until this discovery, and for some 1,500 years prior to Galileo, our ancestors accepted the m...

By Rebecca Schneid , Time.  Excerpt: Starting next week, the moon, Earth’s closest celestial body, will be joined by a new neighbor: a second moon. From Sept. 29 until Nov. 25, astronomers calculate that 2024 PT5— which is what scientists think is an asteroid but have dubbed a “mini-moon”—will be looping around Earth. It will eventually break free of the planet’s gravitational orbit. Sadly, at just about 10 meters, the mini-moon will be extremely hard to see from Earth, but its presence will be there nonetheless for almost two months. The asteroid, which was discovered on Aug. 7 by  NASA , originated from the Arjuna asteroid belt, where it will likely return once it leaves Earth’s orbit. “Earth can regularly capture asteroids from the Near-Earth object (NEO) population and pull them into orbit, making them mini-moons,” researchers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos wrote in their  published research ....  Full article at https://time.com/7022535/...

By Yuri Amelin  and  Qing-Zhu Yin , Science.  Excerpt: Analyses of rocks and soils delivered by the Apollo and Luna missions have established that the Moon is ancient, dry, and depleted of volatile elements. Studies also have indicated that early in its history, the Moon was covered with molten rock. This magma ocean eventually cooled and produced a compositionally diverse surface crust ( 1 ). How long the Moon produced magma has been an open question. On page 1077 of this issue, Wang  et al . ( 2 ) report that volcanism on the Moon occurred as recently as 120 million years ago (Ma). This implies that the Moon may still be able to produce magma. ...Determining the time range of lunar volcanism can be expanded by studying volcanic glass beads produced by lava fountains (eruptions) and preserved in lunar regolith (surface rock and debris) ( 11 ). These beads, despite sizes of only a few tens of micrometers, can be dated with argon ( 40 Ar/ 39 Ar) and uranium-...

By Dennis Normile , Science.  Excerpt: The BepiColombo mission is now scheduled to arrive at the tiny and little-studied planet in November 2026, 11 months behind schedule. The European Space Agency (ESA), which developed the $1.8 billion BepiColombo in cooperation with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), said in a 2 September statement that the  mission's scientific objectives will not be affected  by the delay. Meanwhile, the revised trajectory has the craft passing 165 kilometers from Mercury's surface on 4 September during a gravity assist flyby. The encounter, 35 kilometers closer than originally planned, provides an opportunity to test instruments and study the interaction between the solar wind and the planet's magnetic field. Scientists are planning to make the most of the flyby, starting up 10 of the mission's 16 instruments. ...Launched in October 2018,  BepiColombo is carrying two probes , ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter, with 11 instruments, ...

By Leah Crane , NewScientist.  Excerpt: Astronomers have found six new worlds that look like planets, but formed like stars. These so-called rogue worlds are between five and 15 times the mass of Jupiter, and one of them may even host the beginnings of a miniature solar system. ...From their observations, the researchers determined that planetary mass  brown dwarfs  make up about 10 per cent of the objects in NGC 1333. That is far more than expected based on models of star formation, so there may be extra processes, such as turbulence, that drive the formation of these rogue worlds. ...One of the brown dwarfs is particularly unusual – it has a ring of dust around it just like the one that formed the planets in our solar system. At about five Jupiter masses, it is  the smallest world  ever spotted with such a ring, and it may mark the beginnings of a strange, scaled-down planetary system around a failed star... .  Full article at https://www.newscientist.com...

By Vashan Wright ,  Matthias Morzfeld , and  Michael Manga , PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Abstract: Large volumes of liquid water transiently existed on the surface of Mars more than 3 billion years ago. Much of this water is hypothesized to have been sequestered in the subsurface or lost to space. We use rock physics models and Bayesian inversion to identify combinations of lithology, liquid water saturation, porosity, and pore shape consistent with the constrained mid-crust (∼11.5 to 20 km depths) seismic velocities and gravity near the InSight lander. A mid-crust composed of fractured igneous rocks saturated with liquid water best explains the existing data. Our results have implications for understanding Mars’ water cycle, determining the fates of past surface water, searching for past or extant life, and assessing in situ resource utilization for future missions.  Full article at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.24...

By Daniel Clery , Science.  Excerpt: For years, astronomers thought it was the Milky Way’s destiny to collide with its near neighbor the Andromeda galaxy a few billion years from now. But a new simulation finds a 50% chance the impending crunch will end up a near-miss, at least for the next 10 billion years. ...It’s been known that Andromeda is heading toward our home Galaxy since 1912, when astronomer Vesto Slipher noted that its light is blue-shifted.... ...It wasn’t until the era of orbiting observatories that astronomers could judge Andromeda’s overall velocity in 3D.... It was, they calculated, heading pretty much straight at the Milky Way at a speed of 110 kilometers per second. ...A  study from 2008  suggested a Milky Way–Andromeda merger was inevitable within the next 5 billion years...ending up in...the resulting elliptical, which the researchers dub “Milkomeda.” The Milky Way, seen today as a bright band across the sky, would be replaced by a “milky blob” markin...

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: One of the classic tropes of science fiction is  terraforming Mars : warming up our cold neighbor so it could support human civilization. The idea might not be so far-fetched,  research published today  in Science Advances suggests. Injecting tiny particles into Mars’s atmosphere could warm the planet by more than 10°C in a matter of months, researchers find—enough to sustain liquid water. Although the scheme would require about 2 million tons of particles per year, they could be manufactured from readily available ingredients found in martian dust....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/terraforming-mars-could-be-easier-scientists-thought . 

By Leonardo Carrer et al, Nature Astronomy.  Summary: Beneath the islands of Hawaii, there are systems of underground tunnels forged by fire: lava tubes or ‘pyroducts’ created by the islands’ volcanoes. ...New analyses suggest similar cavern networks born from moving magma exist on the Moon, and someday, ...may host life—ours. ...armed with newer analytical methods, researchers decided to re-examine data the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s miniature radio-frequency instrument collected a decade and a half ago. The pattern in the radar reflections from the Mare Tranquillitatis pit—one of the  best contenders for a cave entrance discovered to date  —indicate that a network of caves does indeed lie below. “The most likely explanation for our observations is an empty lava tube,” said co-author Leonardo Carrer  in a statement . ...Given that the lunar surface is blasted by solar and cosmic radiation, anyone spending time on the Moon will need a base that’s well-shielded—a...

By RHETT ALLAIN , Wired.  Excerpt: Betelgeuse, ...red supergiant has dimmed repeatedly in the past few years, which could mean that it's ready to go full supernova quite soon—and by “soon” we mean within the next 10,000 years. ...If Betelgeuse does blow, it will be the brightest supernova ever witnessed by humans. ...A  supernova that was observed in 2015 (ASASSN-15h)  had a peak luminosity of around 2 x 10 38  watts. That's more power output than 500  billion  suns. It's crazy. Oh, you didn't see that one? Yeah, because it was in a different galaxy. Betelgeuse is in our back yard, astronomically speaking. ...to a Betelgeuse supernova... start with a luminosity of 2 x 10 38  watts, like that supernova in 2015. For the distance, I'm going to use 500 light-years. ...With that, the intensity of the light received by Earth would be 0.711 watts per square meter. ...Crunching the numbers gives me a brightness magnitude of –18.5—which ...will be by far the br...

By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: China brought a capsule full of lunar soil from the far side of the moon down to Earth on Tuesday, achieving the latest success in an ambitious schedule to explore the moon and other parts of the solar system. The sample, retrieved by the China National Space Administration’s Chang’e-6 lander after a 53-day mission, highlights  China’s growing capabilities in space  and notches another win in a series of lunar missions that started in 2007 and have so far been executed almost without flaw....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/science/change-6-china-earth-moon.html . 

By Dennis Overbye , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Since the James Webb Space Telescope began operating two years ago, astronomers have been using it to leapfrog one another millions of years into the past, back toward the moment they call cosmic dawn, when the first stars and galaxies were formed. Last month, an international team doing research as the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey, or JADES, said it had identified the earliest, most distant galaxy yet found — [JADES-GS-z14-0] a banana-shaped blob of color measuring 1,600 light-years across. It was already shining with intense starlight when the universe was in its relative infancy, at only 290 million years old, the astronomers said. ...the wavelength of light from JADES-GS-z14-0 had been stretched more than 15-fold by the expansion of the universe (a redshift of 14 to use astronomical jargon), similar to the way a siren’s pitch becomes lower as it speeds away. That means light has been coming toward us for 13.5 billion ...

By Dan Falk , Smithsonian Magazine.  Excerpt: The casual observer may envision the night sky as being static: When we look at Orion ...or the stars that make up the Big Dipper, our view is very similar to what our grandparents, or even  their  grandparents, would have seen.... But ...when astronomers look at the sky more closely, countless “transient” phenomena come to light ...variable stars, ...supernovas...; and thousands of objects too faint to see with the unaided eye, like asteroids, move steadily across the sky. ...The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, nearing completion ...in northern Chile, ...with a primary mirror 28 feet across and a 3.2-gigapixel camera, will sweep across the sky night after night, requiring a mere five seconds to reposition itself after each 15-second exposure. ...its large field of view—encompassing an area equivalent to 40 full moons—and its ability to move swiftly, the telescope will scan the entire visible sky every three days. ...The camera, to...

By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: Living on one of the seven Earth-size planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system would be strange.... Looming ominously in the sky is an enormous red star, prone to fiery outbursts and appearing several times bigger than the Sun. Hours of the day don’t exist; each planet is tidally locked to the star so that one side is forever scorchingly hot, the other eternally frozen. Along the margin dividing the day- and nightsides—the only place with a tolerable climate—a ceaseless wind blows and the star hangs on the horizon, in perpetual sunset. A short stroll into the dark side brings your planetary companions into view. Every few days one or more passes overhead like a floating lantern, larger than the Moon. ...the quest to learn whether one of the TRAPPIST-1 planets could make a comfortable home for our imaginary observer has been an exercise in frustration. When the  seven known planets around TRAPPIST-1 were revealed in 2017 , they were ...the best plac...

By EMILY LAKDAWALLA  , Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: Martian gullies have been the center of a debate about whether Mars ever has flowing water. Now, a comprehensive study examines the question. Lots of Mars’s hillslopes have gullies, steep ravines that grow when we’re not looking. They look so much like Earth’s own gullies, formed when water and debris carve into steep slopes, that it’s easy to think that water must be involved on Mars, too. But physics says water shouldn’t ever be liquid anywhere on the Martian surface today. Many scientists therefore think gully formation must be triggered by some kind of dry process, involving ice (either water ice or carbon dioxide ice) that  sublimates  directly from solid to gas. In a new study, published in the August 2024 issue of  Icarus , Axel Noblet (University of Western Ontario, Canada) and colleagues amass data on nearly 8,000 gullied slopes and come up with an answer to the “wet or dry” question: It’s both, and ...

By Damond Benningfield , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The  Winchcombe meteorite  splashed into headlines on 28 February 2021, when it streaked above Gloucestershire, England, and broke apart in the atmosphere. Its largest chunk hit a driveway in the village of Winchcombe and splattered into thousands of pieces. ... Analysis of the meteorite  and video of its descent revealed that its parent meteoroid was probably 20–30 centimeters in diameter when it hit the atmosphere, with a mass of about 13 kilograms. ...The research team’s analyses revealed that the meteorite contains eight rock types, all of which show evidence of having been altered by water. ...In addition to revealing the asteroid’s history, the lab work also supported the suggestion that CM and other carbonaceous chondrites supplied young Earth with water and organic compounds....  Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-splashy-meteorite-was-forged-in-multiple-collisions . 

By ARIELLE FROMMER , Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: In the search for planets around other stars, astronomers often seek worlds that are most like our own. The discovery of Gliese 12b — the closest, transiting, temperate, Earth-size planet found to date — promises possibilities for understanding how terrestrial planets become habitable. Gliese 12b orbits a cool red dwarf star around 40 light-years away — practically neighborly compared to other exoplanets — with a period of 12.8 days. Its distance from its host star means that its surface might be temperate enough for life, with a temperature of 107°F (42°C). ...Gliese 12b was initially detected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission that searches for changes in stellar brightness and records  transits  that occur when a planet passes in front of its host star. ...Red dwarf stars, or  M  stars, have small masses and radii and low luminosities, which means any planets orbiting in t...

By Davide Sulcanese ,  Giuseppe Mitri  &  Marco Mastrogiuseppe , Nature Astronomy.  Abstract: The surface of Venus has undergone substantial alterations due to volcanic activity throughout its geological history, and some volcanic features suggest that this activity persisted until as recently as 2.5 million years ago. Recent evidence of changes in the surface morphology of a volcanic vent has been interpreted as a potential indication of ongoing volcanic activity. To investigate more widespread alterations that have occurred over time in the planet’s surface morphology, we compared radar images of the same regions observed from 1990 to 1992 with the Magellan spacecraft. We found ...evidence of new lava flows related to volcanic activities that took place during the Magellan spacecraft’s mapping mission with its synthetic-aperture radar. This study provides further evidence in support of a currently geologically active Venus.  Full article at https://www.nat...

By Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The giant impact that formed the Moon may also have led to extrastrong mantle plumes that enabled the first subduction event, kick-starting Earth’s unique system of sliding plates. In a new study,  Yuan et al.  find evidence tracing the first subduction event to the same impact that created our Moon. ...Yuan’s team explored postimpact mantle convection using both 2D and 3D thermomechanical modeling. They found that the increase in temperature at the core-mantle boundary after the giant impact could have led, over time, to strong  mantle plumes —phenomena still seen today that can sometimes lead to volcanic activity far from plate boundaries....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/earths-subduction-may-have-been-triggered-by-the-same-event-that-formed-the-moon . 

By Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Using data from the Cassini spacecraft, researchers studying one of the rings recently uncovered gaps just a few tens of meters wide that they believe surround unseen mini moonlets. ...In addition to capturing  more than 450,000 images  of the Saturnian system, the spacecraft inadvertently tracked distant stars poking through Saturn’s rings. ...The researchers spotted dozens of places in Saturn’s C ring— one of its innermost rings —that appeared to be 100% transparent. ...Their elongated geometry was a tip-off to their potential identity—similarly shaped structures, albeit much larger, have been  spotted in the outer regions of Saturn’s A ring . Known as propellers [resembling airplane propellers], those features are big enough to show up in Cassini imagery rather than just occultation data, Jerousek said. ...Scientists believe that propellers exist because of unseen moonlets measuring, at most, several hundred meters in d...

By MICHAEL GRESHKO , Science.  Excerpt: Earth got its bell rung this past weekend, sucker-punched by the Sun itself in the biggest geomagnetic storm in more than 2 decades. The storm—triggered when the magnetic fields in blobs of plasma from the Sun collided with Earth’s magnetic field—not only yielded once-in-a-generation aurorae at latitudes as low as the Florida Keys, but also took scientists’ breath away with its power. ...This weekend’s fireworks began with Active Region 3664, a giant cluster of sunspots, more than 15 times wider than Earth, where the Sun’s magnetic field is highly concentrated. The magnetic field lines twisted and eventually snapped, causing the cluster to fling off a series of enormous, billion-ton blobs of plasma toward Earth, each embedded with strong magnetic fields. The detection of at least five of these expulsions, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), caused U.S. forecasters to  issue a “severe” G4 watch —its first since 2005—on 9 May, the day ...

By Angela Fritz, Elise Hammond and Chris Lau, CNN.  Excerpt: A series of  solar flares and coronal mass ejections  have created dazzling auroras that may be seen as far south as Alabama and Northern California — but could also disrupt communications on Earth over the weekend.... [See photos too.]  Full article at https://www.cnn.com/weather/live-news/geomagnetic-solar-storm-northern-lights-05-10-24/index.html . 

By JONATHAN O’CALLAGHAN , Science.  Excerpt: With surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, Venus today is a veritable hellhole, despite being similar in size to Earth and orbiting in the habitable zone of the Sun. Yet studies suggest the planet may have once hosted oceans and even conditions suitable for life. Explaining how all that water disappeared has been a problem. A study  published today  in Nature offers a solution, identifying a new water-loss mechanism operating high in Venus’s atmosphere that could have doubled the rate of water loss. Speedier drying could have allowed oceans to exist until later in Venus’s history—implying the planet might have been habitable for longer. ...At 96% carbon dioxide, its atmosphere traps so much heat that surface temperatures reach more than 450°C. Yet spacecraft and telescopes have seen faint hints of water vapor in the atmosphere, and in the late 1970s, NASA’s Pioneer Venus orbiter detected a sign of long-vanishe...

By Bill Chappell , NPR.  Excerpt: Alejandro Otero was out of town on vacation last month when his son called from their house in Naples, Fla., to tell him ...he heard an extremely loud crash — and realized it came from inside the house. ...the object wasn't a meteorite. It was cylindrical, and while one end was melted by the heat of reentry, the other had a smooth round shape with a circular indentation. ...[It was] a large battery pallet from the International Space Station that NASA  released for an uncontrolled reentry , three years ago. ..."The location of the reentry was predicted by the 18th Space Defense Squadron to be in the Gulf of Mexico,". ..."We are in the process of sending NASA our claim which will include the insurance and non-insurance damages," he says, adding that his lawyer has been in touch with NASA's legal counsel. ..."It will depend on whose module of the space station that came from," said Sundahl, who is the director of the...

By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: Astronomers suspect an unusual near-Earth rocky object is not a typical escapee from the Solar System’s asteroid belt, but is instead a chunk of the Moon blasted into space eons ago by a spectacular impact. Now, a team of researchers has modeled what sort of lunar impact could have ejected such a gobbet of Moon and deposit it in a stable, nearby orbit. Surprisingly, only one strong candidate emerged: the asteroid strike that created the famous Giordano Bruno crater, the youngest large crater on the Moon, the  group reports today  in Nature Astronomy. ...The odd asteroid, known as 469219 Kamo‘oalewa, was discovered in 2016 ...measures between 40 and 100 meters across and rotates particularly fast—once every 28 minutes. It follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun that moves in sync with Earth, giving the impression that the asteroid orbits Earth, even though it is outside the planet’s gravitational influence. The asteroid’s curiou...

By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: In its youth, the Solar System underwent a momentous upheaval: Gravitational tugs between the giant planets threw them off track, causing Jupiter’s orbit to jump closer to the Sun, while Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were flung outward. The gravity of the rampaging giants scattered Pluto and other icy bodies to the Kuiper belt, shepherded the asteroid belt into its current location, and sent countless bodies crashing into the inner Solar System. For many years, researchers believed this “giant planet instability” occurred 600 million years after the Solar System’s birth 4.57 billion years ago, based on the ages of impact craters mapped on the Moon. Recently, evidence has mounted that it  occurred much earlier . And now, some researchers are homing in on a more precise date, just 60 million years after the Solar System’s formation, based on an analysis of rare meteorites derived from an ancient asteroid family, published today in Science. ...

https://eos.org/articles/tatooine-trisolaris-thessia-sci-fi-exoplanets-reflect-real-life-discoveries By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 extrasolar planets since the 1995 discovery of 51 Pegasi b. When the discoveries  started pouring in , astronomers quickly realized that few exoplanets resembled  anything in the solar system . ...A new study led by Puranen examined how the discovery of real exoplanets has influenced portrayals of fictional ones. The researchers showed that as scientists discovered that real-life exoplanets rarely resembled Earth, sci-fi exoplanets became less Earth-like, too. ...The analysis showed that “fictional exoplanets from after the real-life discovery of exoplanets were less likely to have intelligent native life and less likely to have established populations of non-native humans,” Puranen said. Sci-fi exoplanets became less Earth-like and more likely to feature nonintelligent native biosph...

https://www.science.org/content/article/black-hole-center-milky-way-may-be-blasting-out-jet   By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: The supermassive black holes at the centers of many galaxies generate powerful jets, blasting particles thousands of light-years into space. This new image of the Milky Way’s black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), suggests it may have one, too, but perhaps of a more modest nature. The image—taken with polarized light—was  released today by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) , a worldwide array of radio telescopes that in 2019 produced the  first ever image of a black hole . The new image shows light that is oriented in a particular direction, revealing magnetic field lines around the black hole. Although jets would not be visible in such a zoomed-in image, strong magnetic fields are thought to be essential in launching them.... See also European Southern Observatory press release . 

https://www.science.org/content/article/number-known-moonquakes-tripled-discovery-apollo-archive By  PAUL VOOSEN , Science Excerpt:  THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS— The Moon suddenly seems more alive. From 1969 to 1977, seismometers left on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts detected thousands of distinctive “moonquakes.” Now, half a century later, a new analysis has cut through the noise in the old data and nearly tripled the number of moonquakes, adding more than 22,000 new quakes to 13,000 previously identified ones.  The finding,  presented  last week here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, shows “that the Moon may be more seismically and tectonically active today than we had thought,” says Jeffrey Andrews-Hanna, a geophysicist at the University of Arizona unaffiliated with the work, which is  in review  at the  Journal of Geophysical Research . “It is incredible that after 50 years we are still finding new surprises in the data.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html By Kenneth Chang , The New York Times.  Excerpt: When the robotic lander  Odysseus last month became the first American-built spacecraft to touch down on the moon  in more than 50 years, it toppled over at an angle. ...Just a month earlier, another spacecraft, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, sent by the Japanese space agency, had also tipped during landing,  ending up on its head . ...people pointed to the height of the Odysseus lander — 14 feet from the bottom of the landing feet to the solar arrays at the top — as a contributing factor for its off-kilter touchdown. ...Philip Metzger, a former NASA engineer who is now a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, explained  the math and the physics  of why it is more difficult to remain standing on the moon. ...“The side motion that can tip a lander of that size is only a few meters per second...

https://www.science.org/content/article/stellar-remains-famed-1987-supernova-found-last By DANIEL CLERY , Science.  Excerpt: When a nearby star exploded in 1987, it created the first supernova visible to the naked eye in 4 centuries and became one of the most intensely studied objects in space. Now, after more than 35 years of searching, researchers have finally discovered the cinder left behind. Using NASA’s new giant space telescope JWST, astronomers spotted  glowing gas at the center of the blast that can only have been energized by something hot and compact inside it , they report this week in Science. They believe a neutron star, all that remains of the shattered star, is responsible.... 

https://www.science.org/content/article/seeking-clear-skies-and-quiet-astronomers-put-telescopes-u-s-moon-lander By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: Small scopes on IM-1 mission would be first optical and radio observatories on the lunar surface. ...Astronomers have long eyed the Moon as  a good spot to do their work . Its far side, protected from Earth’s hectic radio noise, is perfect for picking up faint signals from the distant universe. To see infrared signals ... Put the telescope into one of the deep craters at the lunar poles that never receive any sunlight and its sensors will benefit from the crater’s permanent chill....

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-does-solar-eclipse-mars-look-like-new-breathtaking-images-caught-nasa-perseverance-rover-idea-180983795/ By Carlyn Kranking , Smithsonian Magazine.  Excerpt: The robot recently observed each of the Red Planet’s moons passing across the sun in the Martian sky [see photo in this article]. 

https://www.science.org/content/article/planets-around-dead-stars-offer-glimpse-solar-system-s-future-after-sun-swallows-us By JONATHAN O’CALLAGHAN , Science.  Excerpt: In about 5 billion years the Sun will balloon up into a red giant, consuming Mercury, probably Venus, and maybe even Earth. But even if the outer planets avoid being swallowed up, they might eventually get pulled in or ejected from the Solar System. A new discovery suggests they can survive intact. Using NASA’s JWST space telescope, astronomers have for the first time directly imaged planets on Solar System–like orbits around white dwarfs, the dead stars left after Sun-like stars swell into red giants and subside. The planets follow orbits resembling those of the giant planets in the outer Solar System—big enough for them to have escaped the inferno.... For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 1.

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/japans-sniper-mission-pinpoints-landing-on-the-moon/ By DAVID DICKINSON , Sky & Telescope.  Excerpt: Today, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA  Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM)  spacecraft pitched over in its lunar orbit, and began its long descent to the Moon's surface. Touchdown occurred at 10:20 a.m. EST / 15:20 UT; NASA’s  Deep Space Network  in Madrid picked up the lander's signal shortly afterward, but problems have ensued. ...SLIM was designed to test the innovative “smart eyes” landing technology, which involves image-matching to aid navigation. The mission was also designed to demonstrate a pinpoint landing, that is, within 100 meters of the target, on a 6- to 8-degree slope. SLIM has a Multi-Band Camera camera on board and, if it is able to, it will deploy two baseball-size rovers on the lunar surface named Lunar Exploration Vehicle 1 and 2. These will hop and roll along the luna...

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2024/01/small-solar-sails-could-be-the-next-giant-leap-for-interplanetary-space-exploration By Marni Ellery, Berkeley Engineering.  Interview excerpt: ...a team of Berkeley researchers [...proposed] to build a fleet of low-cost, autonomous spacecraft, each weighing only 10 grams and propelled by nothing more than the pressure of solar radiation. These miniaturized solar sails could potentially visit thousands of near-Earth asteroids and comets, capturing high-resolution images and collecting samples. ...They describe their work, the Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project, in a  study published  in the journal Acta Astronautica. The BLISS project brings together researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as well as the  Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center  and the  Space Sciences Laboratory . Their work builds on other...

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/scientists-investigate-how-heat-rises-through-europas-ocean By Rebecca Owen , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Europa, one of Jupiter’s many moons, may be capable of supporting life because its icy surface likely obscures a deep, salty ocean.  Europa’s ocean  is also in direct contact with its mantle rocks, and interactions between rock, water, and ice could provide energy to sustain life. Lemasquerier et al.  examined the way heating from Europa’s mantle could drive ocean circulation under the icy crust. The researchers modeled Europa’s ocean to further understand how heating patterns from deep inside the moon may affect the thickness of its icy surface. ...Mantle heat ...comes in two forms. Radiogenic heating is caused by the decay of radioactive materials in the mantle, and  tidal heating  is caused by the deformation Europa undergoes as it orbits Jupiter and experiences its strong gravitational pull. Tidal heating is uneven; it’s h...

https://eos.org/articles/mapping-the-moon-to-shield-astronauts-from-radiation By Sierra Bouchér , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In October 1989, the Sun spit a blast of high-energy particles into the solar system. Earth’s protective magnetic field kept us safe, but the Moon received an intense dose: More than 8 times the radiation received by plant workers during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster scorched the barren lunar surface. As NASA’s Artemis III mission prepares to return explorers to the Moon in 2025, scientists are working to protect them from this kind of unpredictable outburst from the Sun and other radiation from deep space. To do this, they’re turning to the Moon’s natural barriers. By mapping the topography of the lunar surface, researchers have calculated the shielding potential of each mountain range, crater wall, and shadowed slope near the south pole—Artemis III’s target. Their work will guide decisionmaking for the landing location of this mission and beyond....