Space
-
Planetary Science
Europa’s freckles
Reddish spots and shallow pits that pepper the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa may mark regions where warmer and less dense ice percolates to the surface.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary Science
Another moon for Uranus
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the 21st moon known to be orbiting Uranus.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Milky Way black hole gets real
Tracing the path of a star orbiting near the center of our galaxy, astronomers have found the best evidence to date that a supermassive black hole lies at the Milky Way’s core.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Cosmic rays from the solar system
Dust grains from the Kuiper belt, a storehouse of comets and other frozen bodies in the outer solar system, are the source of some of the lower energy cosmic rays that bombard Earth.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Jet Astronomy
For the first time, scientists have traced the slowing and dimming of X-ray-emitting jets from a black hole.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
New views of Jovian moons
The Galileo spacecraft has taken the highest-resolution images ever recorded of three of Jupiter's small, innermost moons.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Galaxies shine light on dark matter
Using a cosmic mirage known as gravitational lensing, astronomers have developed detailed maps of the distribution of dark matter, the invisible material believed to make up 90 percent of the mass of the universe.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Astronomers rediscover long-lost asteroid
After 89 years of playing a cosmic version of Where's Waldo?, astronomers have located a long-lost asteroid named Albert.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Enlarging a Mars photo album
A new set of more than 18,000 images of Mars, posted online in early October, features the sharpest picture of the Red Planet ever taken by an orbiting spacecraft.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Iron-Poor Star: Closing in on the birth of the first stars
Astronomers have found a star so old and metal poor that its chemical composition carries vestiges of the origin of our galaxy.
By Ron Cowen -
Planetary Science
Echoes of Icequakes: Simple probe could measure Europa’s ocean and icy shell
A football-size space probe could provide a low-cost way to determine whether there's a liquid ocean on the Jovian moon Europa.
By Sid Perkins