Decades of research have illuminated how Io and Europa shape—and are shaped by—Jupiter’s giant magnetosphere.
planetary evolution
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Interstellar Interloper Borisov Looks Like a Regular Comet, for Now
A first look at the chemical composition of the interstellar comet Borisov reveals ingredients that look a lot like those found in solar system comets. That’s not likely to last very long.
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Jupiter’s Galilean Moons May Have Formed Slowly
A new model is the first to simultaneously explain many of the moons’ characteristics, including their mass, orbits, and icy composition
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Hunting for Planets Around Old, Anemic Stars
Can a star make planets with 10% of what the Sun had to work with? A synergy between two powerhouse survey telescopes is helping astronomers find that answer.
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Nearest Star System May Have a Second Planet
The exoplanet candidate, tentatively named Proxima c, would be a frozen snowball.
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Ultrahot Exoplanet Bleeds Heavy Metals into Space
The planet is also shaped like a football (the American kind).
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The “Yellowball” Catalog and the Citizen Science That Helped Define It
The online community of the Milky Way Project citizen scientists helped scientists identify compact star-forming regions now known as yellowballs.
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The Cassini Mission May Be Over, but New Discoveries Abound
New analysis of high-resolution images shows ring textures and disruptions within Saturn’s rings in unprecedented detail.
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Giant Planets and Brown Dwarfs Form in Different Ways
Once thought to be part of the same population, planets larger than Jupiter and “failed stars” likely grow via different mechanisms, the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey has shown.
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The Quaking, Shrinking Moon
New evidence suggests that the Moon may still be tectonically active.