Category Astronomy/Space

NASA’s Juno spacecraft – orbiting and closely observing the planet Jupiter – has unexpectedly discovered lightning in the planet’s upper atmosphere, according to a multi-institutional study led by the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which includes two Cornell University researchers.

Jupiter’s gaseous atmosphere seems placid from a distance, but up close the clouds roil in a turbulent, chemically dynamic realm...

X-ray images give unprecedented view of extremely rare type of supernova. New information suggests that these supernovae start as compact stars that lose mass at the end of life. Calcium-rich supernovae are responsible for up to half the calcium in the entire universe. SN 2019ehk has the richest calcium emission of all known transients.

Called “calcium-rich supernovae,” these stellar explosions are so rare that astrophysicists h...

Small telescope and inexpensive diffuser key to results. New detailed observations with NSF’s NOIRLab facilities reveal a young exoplanet, orbiting a young star in the Hyades cluster, that is unusually dense for its size and age. Weighing in at 25 Earth-masses, and slightly smaller than Neptune, this exoplanet’s existence is at odds with the predictions of leading planet formation theories.

New observations...

A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars’s surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to new UBC research published today in Nature Geoscience. The findings effectively throw cold water on the dominant “warm and wet ancient Mars” hypothesis, which postulates that rivers, rainfall and oceans once existed on the red planet.

To reach this conclusion, lead author Anna Grau Galofre, former PhD student in the department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences, developed and used new techniques to examine thousands of Martian valleys...