Phys.org Astronomy and Space

• Multi-spacecraft radio observations trace the heliospheric magnetic field

  Solar flares accelerate energetic electrons that escape into interplanetary space, guided by the Parker spiral magnetic field, and are responsible for the generation of the interplanetary Type III solar radio bursts. With multiple spacecraft now in orbit around the sun, we are in a unique position of observing the propagation of radio emission through the heliosphere from multiple vantage points.

• Circinus West: A dark nebula harboring a nest of newly formed stars

  A celestial shadow known as the Circinus West molecular cloud creeps across this image captured from Chile with the 570-megapixel Department of Energy–fabricated Dark Energy Camera—one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world. Within this stellar nursery's opaque boundaries, infant stars ignite within cold, dense gas and dust, while outflows hurtle leftover material into space.

• Webb helps scientists better understand solar system's origins

  University of Central Florida (UCF) scientists and their collaborators discovered new insights into the formation of distant icy objects in space beyond Neptune, offering a deeper understanding of our solar system's formation and growth.

• Fully automated laboratory heads into orbit to test food production in space

  Cranfield University spin-out company Frontier Space has sent a fully automated laboratory into orbit as part of a European Space Agency project to assess the viability of creating lab-grown food in microgravity.

• New framework suggests stars dissolve into neutrons to forge heavy elements

  Understanding the origin of heavy elements on the periodic table is one of the most challenging open problems in all of physics. In the search for conditions suitable for these elements via "nucleosynthesis," a Los Alamos National Laboratory-led team is going where no researchers have gone before: the gamma-ray burst jet and surrounding cocoon emerging from collapsed stars.

• Disk discovery changes views on star and planet formation

  A study led by Paolo Padoan, ICREA research professor at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB), is challenging the understanding of planetary disk formation around young stars.

• NASA Marshall fires up hybrid rocket motor to prep for moon landings

  NASA's Artemis campaign will use human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, to safely transport crew to and from the surface of the moon, in preparation for future crewed missions to Mars. As the landers touch down and lift off from the moon, rocket exhaust plumes will affect the top layer of lunar "soil," called regolith, on the moon. When the lander's engines ignite to decelerate prior to touchdown, they could create craters and instability in the area under the lander and send regolith particles flying at high speeds in various directions.

• Super-Earths are common outside the solar system, new study shows

  An international team including astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has announced the discovery of a planet about twice the size of Earth orbiting its star farther out than Saturn is to the sun.

• NASA's Roman mission shares detailed plans to scour skies

  NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team shared Thursday the designs for the three core surveys the mission will conduct after launch. These observation programs are designed to investigate some of the most profound mysteries in astrophysics while enabling expansive cosmic exploration that will revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

• NASA tests key spacesuit parts inside this icy chamber

  When NASA astronauts return to the moon under the Artemis campaign and eventually venture farther into the solar system, they will encounter conditions harsher than any humans have experienced before. Ensuring next-generation spacesuits protect astronauts requires new varieties of tests, and a one-of-a-kind chamber called CITADEL (Cryogenic Ice Testing, Acquisition Development, and Excavation Laboratory) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California is helping.

• A novel concept for a multiplanetary crewed mission to Mars and Ceres

  For NASA, sending a crewed mission to Mars has been the long-term goal for over two decades. China has joined the club in recent years, with plans to send crewed missions to the red planet ahead of NASA. In both cases, the plans envision a stepping stone approach, using habitats and infrastructure in cis-lunar space to ensure that regular missions can be possible someday. They also envision how regular missions to Mars could lead to permanent habitats on the planet's surface.

• Spaceship carrying 3 Chinese astronauts docks with Tiangong space station in latest crew rotation

  A spaceship carrying three astronauts docked Thursday with China's space station in the latest crew rotation, marking a further step in the country's ambitions for a crewed mission to the moon and explore Mars.

• New solar instrument captures first high-resolution images at world's largest telescope

  The Institut für Sonnenphysik (KIS) located in Freiburg, Germany, has installed a high-precision measuring instrument for the world's largest solar telescope, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on the Haleakalā volcano located on Maui/Hawaii.

• NASA orbiter spots Curiosity rover making tracks to next science stop

  NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has never been camera shy, having been seen in selfies and images taken from space. But on Feb. 28—the 4,466th Martian day, or sol, of the mission—Curiosity was captured in what is believed to be the first orbital image of the rover mid-drive across the red planet.

• High velocity gas-clump in Milky Way neighborhood may be a dark galaxy

  A team of astronomers and astrophysicists at the Chinese Academy of Science's National Astronomical Observatories has found evidence suggesting that a "gas clump" in a fast-moving cloud in the neighborhood of the Milky Way may be a dark galaxy. Their findings are published in the journal Science Advances.

• NASA's EZIE mission captures 'first light'

  NASA's EZIE (Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer) mission has taken its first measurements.

• China launches 3 astronauts to replace crew on Chinese space station

  China has launched three astronauts into space to replace the crew on the Chinese Tiangong space station, marking a further step in the country's ambitions for a crewed mission to the moon and explore Mars.

• Largest imaging spectro-polarimeter achieves first light at solar telescope

  The U.S. National Science Foundation Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the world's most powerful solar telescope, operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO) near the summit of Maui's Haleakalā, reached a major milestone: achieving first light with its most advanced instrument, the new Visible Tunable Filter (VTF).

• Seeing the waves that make the sun's corona so hot

  If you happen to be enjoying a sunny day, thank the bright surface of the sun, known as the photosphere. At a piping hot temperature of about 5,800 K, the photosphere provides nearly all the sunlight Earth receives. But for all its glorious radiance, the photosphere isn't the hottest part of the sun. That award goes to the diffuse outer atmosphere of the sun known as the corona, which has a temperature of more than a million Kelvin. Parts of the corona can be as hot as 20 million Kelvin, which is hotter than the sun's core. Of course, the big mystery is why the corona is so hot.

• Fifteen new giant radio galaxies discovered with ASKAP

  Using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), astronomers have discovered 15 new giant radio galaxies with physical sizes exceeding 3 million light years. The finding was reported in a research paper published April 9 on the arXiv preprint server.

• Webb spots clues of a black hole at the heart of nearby galaxy M83

  Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered evidence that suggests the presence of a long-sought supermassive black hole at the heart of the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 83 (M83). This surprising finding, made possible by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), reveals highly ionized neon gas that could be a telltale signature of an active galactic nucleus (AGN), a growing black hole at the center of a galaxy.

• Astrophysicists solve the mystery as to why some meteorites look less shocked

  Carbon-containing meteorites look like they had less severe impacts than those without carbon because the evidence was blasted into space by gases produced during the impact. The Kobe University discovery not only solves a 30-year-old mystery, but also provides guidelines for a future sampling mission to Ceres.

• Dark matter search: Dimming starlight may signal passage of dark compact objects

  The detection of dark matter, an elusive form of matter believed to account for most of the universe's mass, remains a long-standing goal within the physics research community. As this type of matter can only emit, reflect or absorb light very weakly, it cannot be observed using conventional telescopes and experimental methods.

• Chinese astronauts set to blast off for space station

  China will send a new team of astronauts to its space station on Thursday, as the country marches toward its ambition of becoming a space power to rival the dominance of the United States.

• The sun's natural gravitational lensing is more powerful than you thought

  Let's turn the sun into a telescope. In fact, we don't have to do any work—we just have to be in the right spot.

• Why Webb may never be able to find evidence of life on another world

  The exoplanet K2-18b is generating headlines because researchers announced what could be evidence of life on the planet. The JWST detected a pair of atmospheric chemicals that on Earth are produced by living organisms. The astronomers responsible for the results are quick to remind everyone that they have not found life, only chemicals that could indicate the presence of life. The results raise a larger question, though: Will the JWST really ever detect life?

• Veteran Chinese astronaut to lead fresh crew to space station

  China announced on Wednesday that a veteran astronaut will lead two crew members on their first flight to the Tiangong space station, the latest milestone in its race to send a manned mission to the moon by 2030.

• TESS detects new sub-Neptune exoplanet more than three times larger than Earth

  Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers have detected a new sub-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a bright G-type star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-3493 b is more than three times larger and about nine times more massive than Earth. The finding was reported in a research paper published April 17 on the preprint server arXiv.

• Eye on infinity: NASA celebrates Hubble's 35th year in orbit

  In celebration of the Hubble Space Telescope's 35 years in Earth orbit, NASA is releasing an assortment of compelling images recently taken by Hubble, stretching from the planet Mars to star-forming regions, and a neighboring galaxy.

• A possible explanation for why there is so much molecular hydrogen in space

  Two materials physicists at The University of Sydney have found a possible explanation for the huge amount of molecular hydrogen in space. In their study published in the journal Communications Chemistry, Yuzhen Guo and David McKenzie tested the possibility of space dust serving as a catalyst to allow hydrogen atoms to merge into hydrogen molecules in space.