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Colors in this image of the Martian moon Phobos indicate a range of surface temperatures detected by observing the moon on Sept. 29, 2017, with the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

NASA’s longest-lived mission to Mars has gained its first look at the Martian moon Phobos, pursuing a deeper understanding by examining it in infrared wavelengths. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter observed Phobos on Sept. 29, 2017...

An inconspicuous star—KIC 8462852—harbors a great mystery. This ASAS-SN image is just a small portion of the sky, but shows how Tabby’s star is one of millions.
Credit: Image courtesy of Benjamin Shappee

In 2015, a star called KIC 8462852 caused quite a stir in and beyond the astronomy community due to a series of rapid, unexplained dimming events seen while it was being monitored by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. And the star has continued to foil scientists’ efforts to understand it ever since.

The latest findings from Carnegie’s Josh Simon and Benjamin Shappee and collaborators take a longer look at the star, going back to 2006 – before its strange behavior was detected by Kepler...

A hybrid type Ia supernova with an early flash triggered by helium-shell detonation. Nature, 2017; 550 (7674): 80 DOI: 10.1038/nature23908

Researchers have found evidence that the brightest stellar explosions in our Universe could be triggered by helium nuclear detonation near the surface of a white dwarf star. The most famous supernovae are the result of a massive star exploding, but a white dwarf, the remnant of an intermediate mass star like our Sun, can also explode. This can occur if the white dwarf is part of a binary star system. The white dwarf accretes material from the companion star, then at some point, it might explode as a type Ia supernova.

Because of the uniform and extremely high brightness (about 5 billion times brighter than the Sun) of type Ia supernovae, they are often ...

An artist’s illustration of a possible ninth planet in our solar system, hovering at the edge of our solar system. Neptune’s orbit is shown as a bright ring around the Sun. Credit: ESO/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign

It might be lingering on the icy outer edges of our solar system, stretching out the orbits of distant bodies, perhaps even tilting the entire solar system to one side. It is a possible “Planet Nine” – a world perhaps 10 times the mass of Earth and 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune. The signs so far are indirect, mainly its gravitational footprints, but that adds up to a compelling case nonetheless. One of its most dedicated trackers, in fact, says it is now harder to imagine our solar system without a Planet Nine than with one.

“There are now five different lines of observati...