All Stories by Ron Cowen
- Space
Moon crash reveals crater held water
Plume of lunar material contained roughly 25 gallons of vapor and ice.
- Space
Chemical fingerprint found for planet hunting
The amount of lithium in the atmosphere of sunlike stars is a powerful indicator of whether such stars have planets, a new study reveals.
- Space
The Milky Way, aglow with activity
Combining infrared and X-ray images from three orbiting observatories, NASA has unveiled a never-before-seen composite portrait of the Milky Way’s bustling center.
- Space
Signature of antimatter detected in lightning
The signature of positrons has been found for the first time in gamma rays associated with storms on Earth.
- Space
A little bit of gamma-ray music
BLOG: Art and science meld during a musical performance for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope
- Space
Gamma-ray sources guide astronomers to pulsars
Gamma-ray emissions are providing a guide to finding the compact, rapidly rotating remnants of massive stars known as pulsars.
- Space
Cosmic rays traced to centers of star birth
By detecting gamma rays, a new generation of telescopes bolsters theory that supernovas are origin of some cosmic rays
- Space
Gamma-ray observations shrink known grain size of spacetime
A new study eliminates some theories of quantum gravity by finding that spacetime isn’t as lumpy as some models had proposed.
- Planetary Science
Mercury, As Never Seen Before: MESSENGER visits innermost planet
The first spacecraft to visit Mercury in 33 years imaged 25 percent of the crater-pocked surface that had never before been seen close-up.
- Space
Panel says planned NASA rocket won’t do the job
The Ares 1 set to replace the space shuttle is too expensive and won’t be ready soon enough, the Augustine Committee concludes.
- Space
SuperEarths common for other stars
A mother lode of 32 newly discovered planets brings the number of known extrasolar planets to more than 400 and suggests that lightweight planets are common around sunlike stars.
- Space
Images show puny plume from moon crash
Data from another craft suggest iron and mercury, not frozen water, were kicked up when a spent rocket plunged into a lunar crater
