Remember that new object, COW, named for a strange supernova? We’ve seen four more of these Fast Blue Optical Transits, and new research may even have figured out just how and why they occur. Plus, Crew-4 launches, a bunch of planetary science news, micronovae, and this week in rocket history, we look back at the San Marco program.
The payload computer aboard the Hubble Space Telescope stopped running on Sunday, June 13, 2021, and now the operations team is working to either save the module or switch to a backup. Plus, a protoplanetary disk, stellar mega-flares, missing dark matter, trans-Neptunian objects, and a review of Brandon Sanderson’s novel Skyward.
Physicists have built a pair of microscopic drums and, through quantum entanglement, have found they beat together in perfect synchrony. Plus, dwarf galaxies, China’s Zhurong rover, the East African Rift, and more about ice giants.
A newly found object nearly four times farther out from the Sun than Pluto now holds the record for the farthest observed in our solar system. Plus, forming super-Earths, finding potentially habitable planets, jellyfish galaxies, the Crab Nebula, and this week’s What’s Up.
In our new format, we bring you a mix of stories. First, an update on the Bennu sampling situation. Next, the top stories, where NASA has reported that the SOFIA airborne telescope found water in a sunlit crater on the Moon, and another team has found water ice reservoirs. Plus, the search for Planet Nine, studying asteroid Psyche 16, and the magnetic fields at a jellyfish galaxy.
Join us today as we look at New Horizons images of Pluto for evidence of how the planet’s icy ocean formed. We also discuss Breakthrough Listen’s announcement of a new catalogue of “exotic” targets. And finally, we share the news that a very young hot Jupiter close to its star was found in TESS data.
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