This is an artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue areas) on its surface. Ancient regions on Mars bear signs of abundant water – such as features…
Category: Planetary Science
Astronomers use Webb to probe a ‘steam world’ in the constellation Pisces
The study found that the planet’s atmosphere contains a high concentration of heavier molecules, including a significant amount of water vapor. Credit: NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STSCI), Ralf Crawford (STSCI)…
Astronomers detect multiple extended tidal tails in an old globular cluster
High-probability members of NGC 288’s tidal tails. The green points show stars lying along the trailing tail, the cyan points designate candidate stars in the inner leading tail, and yellow…
The sun unleashes its strongest flare this cycle
Image of the October 3, 2024 X9 flare seen in extreme ultraviolet light. Credit: NASA/SDO Yesterday the sun released a huge solar flare, and it’s heading toward Earth. It’s nothing…
Traces of antimatter in cosmic rays reopen the search for ‘WIMPs’ as dark matter
The image shows the predicted flux of antihelium-3 produced from dark matter (WIMPs) that annihilate producing these antinuclei. Each color represents the prediction for a different mass of dark matter,…
South America treated to rare ‘ring of fire’ eclipse
The eclipse starts off looking like a ‘bite’ has been taken out of the Sun. Skygazers on the tip of South America were treated Wednesday to a spectacular “ring of…
New super-Neptune exoplanet discovered
TESS Simple Aperture Photometry of TOI-5005. Credit: Castro-González et al., 2024. An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new super-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star. The newly…
Webb telescope detects traces of carbon dioxide on the surface of Pluto’s largest moon
An SwRI-led team detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide spectral signatures on Pluto’s largest moon Charon using Webb telescope observations (white), which extend the wavelength coverage of previous New Horizons…
Hubble captures stellar nurseries in majestic spiral galaxy IC 1954
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features the spiral galaxy IC 1954. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, D. Thilker, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST Team This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble…
