Category Astronomy/Space

This scene shows NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover at a location called “Windjana,” where the rover found rocks containing manganese-oxide minerals, which require abundant water and strongly oxidizing conditions to form. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Chemicals found in Martian rocks by Curiosity Mars rover suggest Mars once had more oxygen in its atmosphere than it does now. Researchers found high levels of manganese oxides by using a laser-firing instrument on the rover. This hint of more oxygen in Mars’ early atmosphere adds to other Curiosity findings – such as evidence about ancient lakes – revealing how Earth-like our neighboring planet once was.

This research also adds important context to other clues about atmospheric oxygen in Mars’ past...

In preparation for the imminent arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft in July 2016, astronomers used ESO’s Very Large Telescope to obtain spectacular new infrared images of Jupiter using the VISIR instrument. They are part of a campaign to create high-resolution maps of the giant planet to inform the work to be undertaken by Juno over the following months, helping astronomers to better understand the gas giant. This false-colour image was created by selecting and combining the best images obtained from many short VISIR exposures at a wavelength of 5 micrometres. Credit: ESO/L. Fletcher

Stunning new images and the highest-resolution maps to date of Jupiter at thermal infrared wavelengths give a glowing view of Juno’s target, a week ahead of the NASA mission’s arrival at the giant planet...

Images of one of the many pieces of opal found in meteorite EET 83309. At top right is a backscattered electron image (the long thin dark object is opal). At bottom left is an image of silica concentrations in opal and surrounding meteoritic minerals. At top left is an image of oxygen concentrations in opal and surrounding minerals. At bottom right is an image nickel concentrations in opal and surrounding minerals. Credit: H. Downes

Planetary scientists have discovered pieces of opal in a meteorite found in Antarctica, a result that demonstrates that meteorites delivered water ice to asteroids early in the history of the solar system. Led by Professor Hilary Downes of Birkbeck College London, the team announce their results at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham on Monday 27 June.

This figure shows the locations of the radio telescopes linked together to observe the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way. Credit: Ortiz-LeOn et al.

At the heart of our galaxy’s center is SagA*, a supermassive black hole containing ~4 million solar-masses of material. SgrA* is relatively faint, unlike the supermassive black holes in some other galaxies. This is probably because, unlike its active cousins, it is not aggressively accreting material and so is neither heating up its environment nor ejecting particularly intense jets of fast-moving charged particles. Of course, it is also faint because it is located about 25 000 light years from Earth and because it is shrouded in absorbing, intervening dust...