Too big to be planets but too small to be stars, distant brown dwarfs are a key ingredient for understanding the history of the Milky Way. These elusive objects have…
Category: Astronomy
Nearest millisecond pulsar has radius of 11.4 kilometers and is 1.4x as heavy as the sun
The nearest millisecond pulsar, PSR J0437-4715, has a radius of 11.4 kilometers and a mass 1.4 times that of the Sun. This is the result of precision measurements made by…
Slow-spinning radio neutron star breaks all the rules
No other radio-emitting neutron star, out of the more than 3000 discovered so far, has been discovered rotating so slowly. The results are published today in Nature Astronomy. Lead author…
At the last second: Sunrise III launches successfully
From the stratosphere, the balloon-borne solar observatory has a clear view of the sun. After a series of weather-related aborts since the end of May, the Sunrise III balloon-borne solar…
Analysis of NASA InSight data suggests Mars hit by meteoroids more often than thought
NASA’s Mars InSight Lander may be resting on the Red Planet in retirement, but data from the robotic explorer is still leading to seismic discoveries on Earth. Mars may be…
Iron meteorites hint that our infant solar system was more doughnut than dartboard
Four and a half billion years ago, our solar system was a cloud of gas and dust swirling around the sun, until gas began to condense and accrete along with…
Bennu holds the solar system’s ‘original ingredients,’ might have been part of a wet world
A deep dive into the sample of rocks and dust returned from near-Earth asteroid Bennu by NASA’s University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission has revealed some long-awaited surprises. This view of…
NASA Mission to Study Mysteries in the Origin of Solar Radio Waves
NASA’s CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment, or CURIE, is scheduled to launch July 9, 2024, to investigate the unresolved origins of radio waves coming from the Sun. CURIE will investigate where…
Hubble finds evidence for rare black hole in Omega Centauri
An international team of astronomers has used more than 500 images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope spanning two decades to detect seven fast-moving stars in the innermost region of Omega Centauri,…
New class of Mars quakes reveals daily meteorite strikes
An international team of researchers combine orbital imagery with seismological data from NASA’s Mars InSight lander to derive a new impact rate for meteorite strikes on Mars. Seismology also offers…
