Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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
Cosmic Couple: One galaxy, two gravitational beasts
Astronomers welcomed the discovery of two black holes in one galaxy, which confirms some ideas about how galaxies and black holes merge and evolve.
- 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.
- Astronomy
Something New on the Sun
The sharpest visible-light images of the sun ever recorded are revealing puzzling, new features of sunspots, the dark regions where the sun's powerful magnetic field is concentrated.
- 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.
- Planetary Science
Another moon for Uranus
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of the 21st moon known to be orbiting Uranus.
- 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.
- 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.
- Astronomy
Jet Astronomy
For the first time, scientists have traced the slowing and dimming of X-ray-emitting jets from a black hole.
- Astronomy
Neutron Star Stuff: Just neutrons, no quarks
A new study suggests that although neutron stars may be weird, they’re not strange.
