Astronomy

A team of scientists presented a new gravity map of Mars at the Europlanet Science Congress 2024. The map shows the presence of dense, large-scale structures under Mars’ long-gone ocean and that mantle processes are affecting Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System. The new map and analysis include data from multiple missions, including NASA’s InSIGHT (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission. They also use data from tiny deviations in satellites as they orbit Mars. The paper “The global gravity field of Mars reveals an active interior” will be published in an upcoming edition of JGR: Planets. The lead author is Bart Root of the Delft University of Technology. Some of the results go against an important concept in geology. Geol...

Saturn imaged on 22 August 2024, showing the narrow tilt of its splendid rings. Image: Luigi Morrone. Saturn is arguably the most popular planet, certainly with children and the public at large. Its wonderful system of rings, well seen through even a small telescope, makes it unique in the Solar System.  Unlike Mars and Jupiter, both of which are currently rising high in the Taurus/Gemini area, Saturn lies rather low in the sky from UK shores, among the stars of the largely Southern constellation of Aquarius. Despite this, Saturn still achieves a reasonable altitude of between 26° and 31° from UK shores when it culminates at about 1am in early September. Town and city dwellers just need to find a reasonably flat horizon from the south-west around to the south-east to view Saturn clear loc...

Extreme Climate Survey Science News is collecting reader questions about how to navigate our planet's changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Since the dawn of the Space Age, when robotic probes first left the atmosphere, scientists have known that the solar wind — a stream of charged particles released from the sun’s atmosphere — accelerates as it blows out into the solar system (SN: 8/18/17). Theoretical calculations also indicate that the solar wind’s temperature should drop as it expands into space. This drop does occur, but measurements find that it happens slower than predicted. Observations from Earth have previously spotted Alfvén waves swaying near the sun. Such waves are oscillations in t...

NASA’s Cold Atom Lab leverages quantum technology to enhance space science, exploring gravitational variations, dark matter, and dark energy, and testing general relativity in a microgravity environment.. Credit: NASA NASA’s Cold Atom Lab on the International Space Station uses quantum technology for advanced space science, offering new insights into gravitational fields, dark matter, and dark energy, and testing aspects of general relativity in microgravity. Future space missions could use quantum technology to track water on Earth, explore the composition of moons and other planets, or probe mysterious cosmic phenomena. NASA’s Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station (ISS), has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be...