Category Astronomy/Space

Illustration of Earth’s magnetospheric bow shock. Satellites both in front of (to the left) and behind the bow shock (to the right) detected telltale magnetic signatures that suggest clouds of space dust were passing them. Credit: NASA

A 40-year-old enigma about ghostly magnetic fields in interplanetary space may have finally been solved by new data from a constellation of 12 satellites in near-Earth space.

New research in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters finds that fine dust from pulverized space rocks is riding the solar wind past the spacecraft, which detected the cloud of fine debris as a temporary change in the local magnetic field.

If the discovery is correct, it points to a new way to study the little-understood intersection between the realms of the ve...

Scientists have found a new way to analyze the chemistry of the moon’s soil using a single grain of dust brought back by Apollo 17 astronauts in 1972. Their technique can help us learn more about conditions on the surface of the moon and formation of precious resources like water and helium there.

Back in 1972, NASA sent their last team of astronauts to the Moon in the Apollo 17 mission. These astronauts brought some of the Moon back to Earth so scientists could continue to study lunar soil in their labs. Since we haven’t returned to the Moon in almost 50 years, every lunar sample is precious. We need to make them count for researchers now and in the future...

The so-called “Cocoon Galaxy” not only has a unique shape, it has a rare double-nucleus structure, astronomers report in a new paper.

After studying data from optical and radio telescopes based on the ground and in space, a team of astronomers determined that a galaxy known as NGC 4490 (and nicknamed the “Cocoon Galaxy” because of its shape) has “a clear double nucleus structure,” according to their paper.

One nucleus can be seen in optical wavelengths. The other is hidden in dust and can only be seen in infrared and radio wavelengths.

The...

An international team of astronomers led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has found an unusual monster galaxy that existed about 12 billion years ago, when the universe was only 1.8 billion years old.

Dubbed XMM-2599, the galaxy formed stars at a high rate and then died. Why it suddenly stopped forming stars is unclear.

“Even before the universe was 2 billion years old, XMM-2599 had already formed a mass of more than 300 billion suns, making it an ultramassive galaxy,” ...