Image of Pluto obtained by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby in July 2015, which reveals the smooth, nitrogen plains of Sputnik Planitia (heart-shaped region) and vast, water-ice mountain ranges.…
Category: Planetary Science
India’s Sun probe reaches solar orbit
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain India’s solar observation mission on Saturday entered the Sun’s orbit after a four-month journey, the latest success for the space exploration ambitions of the world’s most…
The most massive neutron stars probably have cores of quark matter
Illustration of a quark core in a neutron star. Credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC – IT Center for Science Atoms are made of three things: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are…
Rocket carrying American lunar lander rolls to launchpad
This image released by NASA shows Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander being encapsulated in the payload fairing, or nose cone, of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket. Final preparations were underway Friday…
New images reveal what Neptune and Uranus really look like
Voyager 2/ISS images of Uranus and Neptune released shortly after the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively, compared with a reprocessing of the individual filter images in this…
ALMA telescope discovers hidden orbit secrets
The ALMA telescope shows how the gas around the dying star in W Aquilae has been shaped by interactions with a sunlike companion star. Both stars are located in the…
After all of this time searching for aliens, are we stuck with the zoo hypothesis?
The Karl Jansky Very Large Array at night, with the Milky Way visible in the sky. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; J. Hellerman In 1950, during a lunchtime conversation with colleagues at the…
Want to get into stargazing? A professional astronomer explains where to start
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain There are few things more peaceful and relaxing than a night under the stars. Through the holidays, many people head away from the bright city lights…
First pulsar detected in globular cluster GLIMPSE-C01
VLITE 340 MHz image of GLIMPSE-C01 from February 27, 2021. Credit: McCarver et al., 2023. Using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have discovered a millisecond pulsar…
