Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Astronomy
Peering into a disrupted stellar nursery
A new infrared portrait of the Carina nebula star-forming region shows a clutch of baby stars tucked inside pillars of thick dust.
- Planetary Science
Renegade moon
Saturn's outlier moon Phoebe didn't coalesce from material near the ringed planet but was captured from the distant Kuiper belt.
- Planetary Science
High Anxiety: Sudden solar flare highlights space risks
Measurements of energetic particles from an unusually strong solar flare that pummeled Earth early this year suggest that astronauts traveling or working in space might sometimes need to reach shelter within minutes of a warning.
- Planetary Science
Mars Polar Lander: Lost but now found?
A reanalysis of an image taken 5 years ago suggests that planetary scientists have found the remains of the Mars Polar Lander, which vanished minutes before it was supposed to touch down on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Craft show
The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft recently imaged Mars Odyssey and Mars Express, marking the first time that a spacecraft orbiting a planet other than Earth has captured images of other craft circling the same planet.
- Planetary Science
Roaming Giants: Did migrating planets shape the solar system?
New simulations suggest that the solar system's four biggest planets were once bunched together, setting up a planetary bowling game that rapidly and violently rearranged the structure of the outer solar system and tossed chunks of debris inward.
- Planetary Science
Ringing in a new moon
The Cassini spacecraft has spotted a new moon of Saturn, only the second known to lie within the planet's main rings.
- Planetary Science
Roving on the Red Planet
Scientists review the discoveries made by the Mars rovers after nearly 18 months on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Saturnian moonscape
Planetary scientists have obtained their closest image yet of Epimetheus, one of Saturn's tiny moons.
- Astronomy
Spotty neutron stars
Astronomers have for the first time discerned hot spots on the surfaces of neutron stars.
- Astronomy
Fleeting Flash: Pinpointing a short gamma-ray burst
An invisible, highly energetic flash detected by a spacecraft early this week may have given astronomers their first glimpse of two neutron stars colliding to forge a black hole.
- Astronomy
Planetary Picture? Criteria for planethood cloud object’s identity
Astronomers are debating whether an image of a planetary-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf qualifies as the first image of an extrasolar planet.
