All Stories by Ron Cowen
- Planetary Science
Martian History: Weathering a new notion
Researchers suggest that intermittent impacts by huge asteroids and comets some 3.5 billion years ago profoundly influenced the landscape of Mars.
- Astronomy
Sizing up small stars
Astronomers have for the first time measured with high precision the size of a small star, Proxima Centauri, the known star nearest to the solar system.
- Astronomy
Milky Way’s Last Major Merger
Astronomers have found new evidence supporting the view that the Milky Way and many other spiral galaxies suffered their last major collision billions of years ago.
- Planetary Science
X rays reveal Eros’ primitive nature
Aided by a blast of X rays from the sun, a spacecraft orbiting the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros has gathered preliminary evidence that the rock is a primitive relic, apparently unchanged since the birth of the solar system.
- Astronomy
Hubble Weighs In: Pinning down an extrasolar planet’s mass
Using a decades-old technique, astronomers have precisely measured the mass of a planet outside our solar system.
- Planetary Science
Seeing Saturn
After 5 years of interplanetary travel, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft has taken its first picture of the ringed planet.
- Astronomy
Galactic cannibalism strikes again
Astronomers have discovered the remains of a tiny galaxy that was swallowed by the galaxy Centaurus A only a few hundred million years ago.
- Planetary Science
Martian Radiation: Giving off a faint X-ray glow
Astronomers have for the first time taken an X-ray image of the Red Planet.
- Astronomy
More evidence of a flat universe
Another balloon-borne experiment recording relic radiation from the Big Bang has found evidence that the universe is flat.
- Astronomy
A supernova’s shocking development
Astronomers have for the first time recorded the full force of the shock wave hurled from supernova 1987A, the brightest stellar explosion witnessed from Earth since the invention of the modern telescope.
- Astronomy
New sky map: Look, Ma, no Milky Way!
Using a radio telescope to record emissions from hydrogen gas, astronomers have penetrated the murk of the Milky Way to map the entire southern sky.
- Planetary Science
Leapin’ Lava! Volcanic eruption on Io breaks the record
Pointing a ground-based telescope at Jupiter's moon Io, astronomers have recorded the most powerful volcano ever observed in the solar system.
