All Stories by Ron Cowen
- Astronomy
Hubble spots North Star companion
Astronomers have obtained an image of a close companion star to Polaris, the North Star.
- Astronomy
Gravity at play
Astronomers have found 19 cosmic mirages, distorted images created when the gravity of a massive galaxy bends and magnifies the light from a background object.
- Astronomy
Outer Limits
A slew of recently discovered objects at the far reaches of the solar system, including a possible tenth planet, are providing scientists with clues about the origin and evolution of this distant region.
- Astronomy
Gauging Star Birth: Spacecraft uses gamma rays as stellar tracer
Using radioactive material spewed into space by dying stars, astronomers have measured the star-formation rate in our galaxy over the past few million years.
- Planetary Science
Moon spray
The Cassini spacecraft has found conclusive evidence that the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus spews jets of icy particles into space.
- Astronomy
A puny way to make planets
Brown dwarfs are failures in the star-making business, but new observations reveal that they may still succeed in growing planets.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Expansion: Supernovas shed light on dark energy
A new study of light from supernovas provides additional hints that dark energy, the mysterious entity revving up the expansion of the universe, might be distributed uniformly throughout space and time.
- Astronomy
Dark shadows
New radio telescope images of the center of the Milky Way make an even more compelling case that a supermassive black hole resides there.
- Planetary Science
Red Planet Express: Mars spacecraft traces a watery tale
A Mars-orbiting spacecraft has provided new details about when and where liquid water existed on the planet.
- Planetary Science
Martian dust storm
In late October, a day after Mars and Earth were at their closest approach until 2018, the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of a large dust storm on the Red Planet.
- Planetary Science
Found and lost
Astronomers who previously announced that they had identified the likely remains of the Mars Polar Lander in images taken by an orbiting spacecraft now say that they were fooled by electronic noise in those images.
- Astronomy
Images of a fiery youth
A faint, infrared glow captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope might be light from the universe's first stars.
