Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- 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
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.
