Ron Cowen

All Stories by Ron Cowen

  1. Astronomy

    A possible signal from Polar Lander

    Astronomers may have heard a faint signal from the vanished Mars Polar Lander spacecraft last month but, as of mid-February, have not detected another.

  2. Astronomy

    A chance to point Hubble

    Get out your heavenly wish list: Astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope are soliciting suggestions for where to point the orbiting observatory this summer.

  3. Astronomy

    Revved-Up Universe

    Astronomers are busy testing the seemingly bizarre notion that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

  4. Astronomy

    Solar magnetism: Memories are made of this

    Despite all its upheavals, the sun's magnetic field has a built-in memory, allowing it to return to its original position and configuration.

  5. Astronomy

    Milky Way gets a new layer

    Astronomers propose that 150 billion corpses of sunlike stars may blanket the visible disk of the galaxy.

  6. Planetary Science

    Life on Europa: A possible energy source

    New evidence supports the notion that Jupiter's moon Europa contains an ocean beneath its icy surface, and a planetary scientist has proposed a novel way that Europa could be getting the energy required to sustain life within that ocean.

  7. Astronomy

    Chandra eyes low-temperature black hole

    An observatory in space has detected the coolest black hole yet found

  8. Astronomy

    Hubble Space Telescope: Eye wide open

    Two months after the failure of a fourth gyroscope shut it down, and 3 weeks after a shuttle crew paid it a service call, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business.

  9. Astronomy

    X-ray Data Reveal Black Holes Galore

    Using a sensitive, new X-ray telescope, astronomers have identified the origin of the high-energy part of the X-ray background and found that supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies are far more numerous than visible-light surveys indicate.

  10. Astronomy

    A Dark View of the Universe

    Two new studies suggest that galaxies may be surrounded by vast halos of dark matter extending at least 1.5 million light-years from each galaxy's center.