Space
- Astronomy
Pluto or bust?
A new National Research Council report may revive plans to send a spacecraft to explore Pluto and its neighborhood.
- Astronomy
Dying star illuminates its own shroud
Images of a planetary nebula, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997 but only recently assembled as a color composite, show a shroud of material cast off and ionized by the dying, sunlike star Henize 3-401.
- Astronomy
Chandra eyes low-temperature black hole
An observatory in space has detected the coolest black hole yet found
- Planetary Science
Life on Europa: A possible energy source
New evidence supports the notion that Jupiter's moon Europa contains an ocean beneath its icy surface, and a planetary scientist has proposed a novel way that Europa could be getting the energy required to sustain life within that ocean.
- Astronomy
X-ray observatory captures a rare supernova
Astronomers have obtained the first portrait of X-ray emission from a rare, so-called Ic supernova.
- Astronomy
Let There Be Spin
X-ray outbursts from two different pairs of stars in our Milky Way are providing clues about how the most rapidly rotating stars in the universe got their spin.
- Planetary Science
Pristine fragments of asteroid breakup
Planetary scientists have for the first time precisely dated a collision that smashed an asteroid into fragments.
- Astronomy
Hubble Space Telescope: Eye wide open
Two months after the failure of a fourth gyroscope shut it down, and 3 weeks after a shuttle crew paid it a service call, the Hubble Space Telescope is back in business.
- Astronomy
Planetary System in the Making? Stellar eclipse hints at planet-forming debris
Astronomers reported the first evidence that a young star is periodically eclipsed by a stream of debris, possibly an orbiting belt of asteroids held in place by a massive, unseen planet.
- Astronomy
Outlier Planet: Extrasolar places that are like home
A team of veteran hunters of planets outside the solar system has come up with a landmark finding: a Jupiterlike planet orbiting a Sunlike star at a Jupiterlike distance.
- Astronomy
X-ray Data Reveal Black Holes Galore
Using a sensitive, new X-ray telescope, astronomers have identified the origin of the high-energy part of the X-ray background and found that supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies are far more numerous than visible-light surveys indicate.
- Astronomy
Seeing Red: A cool revival of Hubble’s infrared camera
New images provide a graphic demonstration that the Hubble Space Telescope's infrared vision has been restored.
