Category Astronomy/Space

Images from the JunoCam visible-light camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft supports the theory that the icy crust at the north and south poles of Jupiter’s moon Europa is not where it used to be. Another high-resolution picture of the icy moon, by the spacecraft’s Stellar Reference Unit (SRU), reveals signs of possible plume activity and an area of ice shell disruption where brine may have recently bubbled to the surface.

The JunoCam results recentl...

This exoplanet is larger but seven times less massive than Jupiter and is the second least dense planet discovered to date. An international team led by researchers from the EXOTIC Laboratory of the University of Liège, in collaboration with MIT and the Astrophysics Institute in Andalusia, has just discovered WASP-193b, an extraordinarily low-density giant planet orbiting a distant Sun-like star.

This new planet, located 1,200 light-years from Earth, is 50% larger than Jupiter but seven times less massive, giving it an extremely low density comparable to that of cotton candy...

Astronomers from the Western Sydney University in Australia and elsewhere report the detection of a new supernova remnant (SNR) candidate. The newfound SNR candidate, dubbed “Raspberry” due to its morphology, was identified in the near side of the Milky Way’s Scutum-Centaurus Arm. The findings were detailed in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

Astronomers have proposed a new theory to explain the origin of phosphorus, one of the elements important for life on Earth. The theory suggests a type of stellar explosion known as ONe novae as a major source of phosphorus.

After the Big Bang, almost all of the matter in the Universe was comprised of hydrogen.

Other elements were formed later, by nuclear reactions inside stars or when stars exploded in events known as novae or supernovae.

But there are a variety of stars and a variety of ways they can explode.

Astronomers are still trying to figure out which processes were important in creating the abundances of elements we see in the Universe.

In this study, Kenji Bekki, at The University of Western Australia, an...