News by Subject Space & Planetary

A US Naval Research Laboratory-built camera mounted on the NASA Parker Solar Probe revealed an asteroid dust trail that has eluded astronomers for decades.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted the light of a massive galaxy seen only 970 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy, called MAMBO-9, is the most distant dusty star-forming galaxy that has ever been observed without the help of a gravitational lens.

The most extensive survey of atmospheric chemical compositions of exoplanets to date has revealed trends that challenge current theories of planet formation and has implications for the search for water in the solar system and beyond.

Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Science (NAOC), Peking University and Tsinghua University have found a special population of dwarf galaxies that could mainly consist baryons within radii of up to tens of thousands of light-years. This contrasts with the normal expectation that such regions should instead be dominated by dark matter.

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is of great interest to scientists due to its subsurface ocean, making it a prime target for those searching for life elsewhere. New research led by Carnegie's Doug Hemingway reveals the physics governing the fissures through which ocean water erupts from the moon's icy surface, giving its south pole an unusual "tiger stripe" appearance.

Shortly after NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu, an unexpected discovery by the mission's science team revealed that the asteroid could be active, or consistently discharging particles into space.

Technology 'squeezes' out quantum noise so more gravitational wave signals can be detected.