How to Observe Comet NEOWISE
Many of us, having come to terms with the loss of the large comets, have found ourselves startled to watch as comet NEOWISE has grown into a stunningly beautiful object in our sky.
Could Mini-Neptunes Be Irradiated Ocean Planets?
In a new paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters with lead author Olivier Mousis, a team of researchers suggests that the mini-Neptunes are worlds where the water has been heated to a supercritical state.
Volcanoes on Venus Are Still Active
A new paper in Nature Geoscience, with lead author Anna Gulcher, identifies 37 recently active volcanic structures on Venus.
‘Celestial Sleuth’ Sheds New Light on Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’
I’d like to turn for a moment to astronomical sleuthing, and the work of Donald Olson, Russell Doescher and Doescher’s students who have been working to understand exactly when Johannes Vermeer painted his famous “View on the Delft” painting.
11 Billion Years of Cosmic Expansion History Filled In
The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) team has released dozens of papers that combine to more than 500 pages of observations and analysis of galaxies across 11 billion years of the universe’s evolution.
New View of Oldest Light Adds Twist to Debate over Universe’s Age
A new paper on arXiv and shared out by the Simons Foundation uses the Atacama Cosmology Telescope to look at the small scale variations in polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation to try and measure the age of the universe.
Blast Sends Star Hurtling Across the Milky Way
Stars can get flung hither and yon through a variety of processes, and in a new paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with lead other Boris Gansicke, a truly odd star has been caught fleeing at breakneck speeds across our own galaxy.
Astronomers Watch a Black Hole’s Corona Disappear, Then Reappear
In a new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters with lead author Claudio Ricci, astronomers document the fade away of the X-ray corona of galaxy 1ES 1927+654.
Emirates Mars Mission to Launch with ASU-Designed Instrument
On schedule and ready to go is a UAE mission: their first interplanetary mission and the first such mission from any Arabic speaking country. Called Al Amal, which translates to “hope”, their orbiter will study Mars’ atmosphere in detail, adding to the dataset started by NASA’s Mars MAVEN orbiter.
Subaru Telescope and New Horizons Explore the Outer Solar System
On the fifth anniversary of its historic flyby of Pluto, the New Horizons mission is looking back on its greatest discoveries while it looks ahead to its next encounter.
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