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...

Transmittance electron microscopic image of the composite photocatalyst with two components, black phosphorus (BP) and graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4). Credit: Osaka University

Researchers have developed new metal-free photocatalyst and show visible and near infrared light-driven production of hydrogen from water. “We were pleased to find a good amount of hydrogen produced from water using our new composite photocatalyst with graphitic carbon nitride and black phosphorus,” lead author Tetsuro Majima says. “But what we didn’t expect to find was that even when using low-energy light, in the near infrared, the photocatalyst continued to produce hydrogen.”

Like graphite, graphitic carbon nitride forms in large sheets, but carbon nitride sheets also have holes that can interact with hydrogen ...

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 ...