Scientists have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Like Earth, Mercury's outer core is composed of liquid metal, but there have only been hints that Mercury's innermost core is solid. Now, in a new study, scientists report... Continue Reading →
A stellar flare 10 times more powerful than anything seen on our sun has burst from an ultracool star almost the same size as Jupiter Coolest and smallest star to produce a superflare foundStar is a tenth of the radius... Continue Reading →
This breakthrough was announced today in a series of six papers published in a special issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87 [1], a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy... Continue Reading →
This three-dimensional view of asteroid Bennu was created by the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA), contributed by the Canadian Space Agency, on NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. From Feb. 12 through 17, OLA made more than 11 million measurements of the distance between... Continue Reading →
The striking spiral galaxy M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting... Continue Reading →
Messier 15 is a 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy, one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. About 200 light-years in diameter, it lies about 35,000 light years away... Continue Reading →
Is star AE Aurigae on fire? No. Even though AE Aurigae is named the flaming star, the surrounding nebula IC 405 is named the Flaming Star Nebula, and the region shape gives the appearance offire, there is no fire. Fire, typically defined as the rapid molecular... Continue Reading →
Why are stars forming in the bridge between these colliding galaxies? Usually when galaxies crash, star formation is confined to galaxy disks or tidal tails. In Arp 194, though, there are bright knots of young stars right in a connecting bridge. Analyses of... Continue Reading →
The ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury has been firing its electric propulsion thrusters since December in the first of 22 ‘thruster burn arcs’ that will steer the spacecraft to its destination. While taking routine images with the Mercury Transfer Module (MTM)’s solar... Continue Reading →
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