Category Astronomy/Space

This is a depiction of Mars today and what a warm and wet ancient Mars might have looked like. Credit: Wei Luo, Northern Illinois University

Findings suggest Mars had ocean, active hydrologic cycle. A new study led by Northern Illinois University geography professor Wei Luo calculates the amount of water needed to carve the ancient network of valleys on Mars and concludes the Red Planet’s surface was once much more watery than previously thought. The study bolsters the idea that Mars once had a warmer climate and active hydrologic cycle, with water evaporating from an ancient ocean, returning to the surface as rainfall and eroding the planet’s extensive network of valleys.

Satellites orbiting Mars and rovers on its surface have provided scientists with convincing evidence that water helped...

This shows a distant galaxy — visible as the smudge to the lower right — as it begins to align with and pass behind a star sitting nearer to us within the Milky Way. This is an event known as a transit. The star is called HD 107146, and it sits at the center of the frame. Its light has been blocked in this image to make its immediate surroundings and the faint galaxy visible — the position of the star is marked with a green circle.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is famous for its jaw-dropping snapshots of the cosmos. The Picture of the Week is a distant galaxy – visible as the smudge to the lower right – as it begins to align with and pass behind a star sitting nearer to us within the Milky Way. This is an event known as a transit...

1. A brown dwarf can give off some light, allowing scientists — professional or volunteer — to search for the object as it moves across the sky.
Chuck Carter and Gregg Hallinan/Caltech/NASA
2. This gif shows the ‘flipbook’ from which citizen scientists identified the new brown dwarf, marked with the red circle.
Credit: NASA

A new citizen-science tool released earlier this year to help astronomers pinpoint new worlds lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system has already led to a discovery: a brown dwarf a little more than 100 light years away from the Sun. Just 6 days after the launch of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 website in February, 4 different users alerted the science team to the curious object, whose presence has since been confirmed via an infrared telescope...

Sedimentary Signs of a Martian Lakebed (Shallow Part): This evenly layered rock imaged in 2014 by the Mastcam on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows a pattern typical of a lake-floor sedimentary deposit near where flowing water entered a lake. Shallow and deep parts of an ancient Martian lake left different clues in mudstone formed from lakebed deposits. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Water carried more oxygen at certain times, depths. A long-lasting lake on ancient Mars provided stable environmental conditions that differed significantly from one part of the lake to another, according to a comprehensive look at findings from the first three-and-a-half years of NASA’s Curiosity rover mission...