NASA’s DART mission hits asteroid in first-ever planetary defense test
After 10 months flying in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) – the world’s first planetary defense technology demonstration – successfully impacted its...
Astronomers detect hot gas bubble swirling around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have spotted signs of a ‘hot spot’ orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre...
Astronomers unveil new and puzzling features of mysterious fast radio bursts
Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun’s annual output.
More than 15 years after the...
Saturn’s magic ring is from its lost moon Chrysalis, shows study
Rings appear to be common around planets in the solar system, but the dramatic rings of Saturn have long puzzled astronomers, as has the...
Saturn might have torn a moon apart to make its rings
Saturn is a world of surprises.
The Voyager 1 and 2 flybys and later on, the Cassini mission, opened our collective eyes to intricate details...
Astronomers risk misinterpreting planetary signals in James Webb data
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing the universe with spectacular, unprecedented clarity.
The observatory’s ultrasharp infrared vision has cut through the cosmic dust...
Saturn’s rings and tilt could be the product of an ancient, missing moon
Swirling around the planet’s equator, the rings of Saturn are a dead giveaway that the planet is spinning at a tilt.
The belted giant rotates...
Scientists find new way to detect baby planets in the making
Astronomers agree that planets are born in protoplanetary disks — rings of dust and gas that surround young, newborn stars.
While hundreds of these disks...
Scientists capture the sharpest image of universe’s most massive known star
Astronomers have yet to fully understand how the most massive stars — those more than 100 times the mass of the sun — are...
‘Diamond rain’ in space could prove useful on earth
“Diamond rain,” a long-hypothesized exotic type of precipitation on ice giant planets, could be more common than previously thought, a study finds.
In an earlier...