Astronomers usually spend their time contemplating the heavens above. But one group of dedicated stargazers has challenged the community to look instead to the future, envisioning the tools for generating more celestial discoveries. On July 6, a team of astronomers proposed a new type of mission to crack some of the universe’s most intriguing mysteries […]
They’re a fascinating pair: Two icy worlds, spinning around their common center of gravity like a pair of figure skaters clasping hands. Scientists believe they were shaped by a cosmic collision billions of years ago, and yet, in many ways, they seem more like strangers than siblings. A high-contrast array of bright and dark features […]
A researcher from the University of Alaska Fairbanks is part of a NASA mission to get close-up photos of Pluto. Peter Delamere, a space physicist at the UAF Geophysical Institute, is modeling the solar wind’s interaction with Pluto’s escaping atmosphere. NASA launched the New Horizons space probe on Jan. 19, 2006, to take the first-ever […]
To find life in the universe, it helps to know what it might look like. If there are organisms on other planets that do not rely wholly on photosynthesis — as some on Earth do not — how might those worlds appear from light-years away? That’s among the questions University of Washington doctoral student Edward […]