Category Astronomy/Space

The Jezero Crater delta, a well-preserved ancient river delta on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/JHU-APL

Iron-rich rocks near ancient lake sites on Mars could hold vital clues that show life once existed there, research suggests. These rocks – which formed in lake beds – are the best place to seek fossil evidence of life from billions of years ago, researchers say. A new study that sheds light on where fossils might be preserved could aid the search for traces of microbes — on Mars, which it is thought may have supported primitive life forms around four billion years ago.

A team of scientists has determined that sedimentary rocks made of compacted mud or clay are the most likely to contain fossils. These rocks are rich in iron and a mineral called silica, which helps preserve fossils...

Ralph Instrument Pluto Maps. New Horizons not only showed humanity what Pluto looks like, but also provided information on the composition of Pluto’s atmosphere and surface. These maps — assembled using data from the Ralph instrument — indicate regions rich in methane (CH4), nitrogen (N2), carbon monoxide (CO) and water (H2O) ices. Sputnik Planitia shows an especially strong signature of nitrogen near the equator. SwRI scientists combined these data with Rosetta’s comet 67P data to develop a proposed “giant comet” model for Pluto formation. Credit: Image Courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

New Horizons, Rosetta data fusion points to new theory...

This composite image of E0102 allows astronomers to learn new details about this object discovered more than three decades ago. X-rays from Chandra are blue and purple, and visible light data from VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument are bright red. Additional data from the Hubble Space Telescope are dark red and green. Credit: X-ray (NASA/CXC/ESO/F.Vogt et al); Optical (ESO/VLT/MUSE & NASA/STScI)

Astronomers have discovered a special kind of neutron star for the first time outside of the Milky Way galaxy, using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Neutron stars are the ultra dense cores of massive stars that collapse and undergo a supernova explosion...

One of the new dark-galaxy candidates, identified through a combination of spectral information (left) and images reflecting the emission of gas (middle) and stars (right). The position of the dark-galaxy candidate is marked by the red circle. Credit: R. A. Marino / MUSE

The identification of at least six candidates for dark galaxies could help filling an important gap in our understanding of galaxy evolution. Dark galaxies have a few (if any) stars in them and are, for that reason, notoriously difficult to detect with current instruments.

Despite substantial progress over the past half a century in understanding of how galaxies form, important open questions remain regarding how precisely the diffuse gas known as the ‘intergalactic medium’ is converted into stars...