'Smoking gun' evidence for theory that Saturn's collapsing magnetic tail causes auroras
Saturn's auroras are caused by the same phenomenon which leads to dramatic auroral displays on Earth.
May 19th, 2014
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SpaceX-3 mission to return Dragon's share of Space Station science
The splashdown of SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft on May 18 concludes the company's third contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station, assisting scientists who have investigations returning to Earth complete their analyses.
May 18th, 2014
Read morePlastic, 'wrong-way' dunes arise on Saturn moon Titan
The dunes of Titan tell cosmic tales. A Cornell senior and researchers have narrowed theories on why the hydrocarbon dunes - think plastic - on Saturn's largest moon are oriented in an unexpected direction, a solar system eccentricity that has puzzled space scientists.
May 15th, 2014
Read moreGiant telescope tackles orbit and size of exoplanet
Using one of the world's largest telescopes, a Lawrence Livermore team and international collaborators have tracked the orbit of a planet at least four times the size of Jupiter.
May 15th, 2014
Read moreRosetta's target comet is becoming active
The scientific imaging system OSIRIS on board ESA's Rosetta spacecraft witnesses the awakening of the mission's target comet.
May 15th, 2014
Read moreThe shrinking of Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot - a swirling storm feature larger than Earth - is shrinking. This downsizing, which is changing the shape of the spot from an oval into a circle, has been known about since the 1930s, but now these striking new Hubble Space Telescope images capture the spot at a smaller size than ever before.
May 15th, 2014
Read moreStability lost as supernovae explode
A new model accounting for the loss of stability in supernova explosions sheds some new light on this phenomenon.
May 15th, 2014
Read moreMAVEN solar wind ion analyzer will look at key player in Mars atmosphere loss
This past November, NASA launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission in the hope of understanding how and why the planet has been losing its atmosphere over billions of years.
May 14th, 2014
Read moreMagnetar formation mystery solved?
Magnetars are the super-dense remnants of supernova explosions. They are the strongest magnets known in the Universe - millions of times more powerful than the strongest magnets on Earth. A team of astronomers now believe they've found the partner star of a magnetar for the first time. This discovery helps to explain how magnetars form and why this particular star didn't collapse into a black hole as astronomers would expect.
May 14th, 2014
Read moreRadiation from early universe found key to answer major questions in physics
Astrophysicists have measured the minute gravitational distortions in polarized radiation from the early universe and discovered that these ancient microwaves can provide an important cosmological test of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
May 13th, 2014
Read moreOdd planet, so far from its star...
A gas giant has been added to the short list of exoplanets discovered through direct imaging. It is located around GU Psc, a star three times less massive than the Sun and located in the constellation Pisces.
May 13th, 2014
Read moreThe first building blocks of the universe
The first galaxies evolved only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. But why do they have such a great variety of shapes and structures? How did the universe evolve as a whole? Two German-Chinese Partner Groups are using observations and simulations to investigate how the early universe evolved
May 13th, 2014
Read moreHidden nurseries in the Milky Way
ATLASGAL is a survey of the Galactic Plane at a wavelength of 0.87 mm. It has revealed an unprecedented number of cold dense clumps of gas and dust as the cradles of massive stars, thus providing a complete view of their birthplaces in the Milky Way.
May 13th, 2014
Read moreA turbulent birth for stars in merging galaxies
Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of French astrophysicists have for the first time explained a long standing mystery: why surges of star formation (so called 'starbursts') take place when galaxies collide.
May 12th, 2014
Read moreNASA telescopes coordinate best-ever flare observations
On March 29, 2014, an X-class flare erupted from the right side of the sun - and vaulted into history as the best-observed flare of all time. The flare was witnessed by four different NASA spacecraft and one ground-based observatory - three of which had been fortuitously focused in on the correct spot as programmed into their viewing schedule a full day in advance.
May 8th, 2014
Read moreGalaxies out of a Supercomputer
A new computer simulation shows the formation of galaxies with unprecedented precision, allowing astrophysicists to indirectly confirm the standard model of cosmology.
May 7th, 2014
Read moreAstronomers gain new insights into star cluster formation
Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and infrared telescopes, astronomers have made an important advance in the understanding of how clusters of stars come into being.
May 7th, 2014
Read moreA stellar explosion on the outer reaches of the Universe provides clues about black hole formation
On 24 October 2012 observatories across the world were alerted about a huge stellar explosion, the GRB121024A. The data obtained on that explosion, which took place about 11,000 million years ago, have made it possible to reconstruct how a black hole is formed.
May 7th, 2014
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