News by Subject Space & Planetary

Measurements of gravitational waves from approximately 50 binary neutron stars over the next decade will definitively resolve an intense debate about how quickly our universe is expanding, according to findings from an international team that includes University College London (UCL) and Flatiron Institute cosmologists.

Inside Earth's magnetic bubble, scientists have long been listening in on space sounds created by various electromagnetic waves, and now they've found one that booms like a drum.

Japanese scientists have quantitatively confirmed how energetic an auroral breakup can be. Using a combination of cutting-edge ground-based technology and new space-borne observations, they have demonstrated the essential role of an auroral breakup in ionizing the deep atmosphere. The research furthers our understanding of one of the most visually stunning natural phenomena.

The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an automated sky survey project based at Caltech's Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California, has produced its first bounty of new results. Since officially beginning operations in March 2018, the new instrument has discovered 50 small near-Earth asteroids and more than 1,100 supernovae, while observing more than 1 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

The Zwicky Transient Facility, based at the Palomar Observatory, has identified over a thousand new objects and phenomena in the night sky, including more than 1,100 new supernovae and 50 near-Earth asteroids. University of Washington scientists are part of the ZTF team and led the development of the collaboration's alert system, which informs science teams of possible new objects or changes to known objects in the sky.

New discoveries from the Zwicky Transient Facility include exploding stars, near-Earth asteroids, and more.

New ALMA observations show there is ordinary table salt in a not-so-ordinary location: 1,500 light-years from Earth in the disk surrounding a massive young star. Though salts have been found in the atmospheres of old, dying stars, this is the first time they have been seen around young stars in stellar nurseries. The detection of this salt-encrusted disk may help astronomers study the chemistry of star formation as well as identify other similar protostars hidden inside dense cocoons of dust and gas.