Looking Up by Bob Eklund

An international group of astronomers, involving the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, has succeeded in detecting a planet around Barnard’s star, which is only six light-years away. The planet has just over …[READ MORE]

Peering through thick walls of gas and dust surrounding the messy cores of merging galaxies, astronomers are getting their best view yet of close pairs of supermassive black holes as they march toward coalescence into …[READ MORE]

After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets — more planets even than stars — NASA’s Kepler space telescope (https://www.nasa.gov/kepler) has run out …[READ MORE]

Massive structures of moving air that appear like waves in Jupiter’s atmosphere were first detected by NASA’s Voyager missions during their flybys of the gas-giant world in 1979. The JunoCam camera aboard NASA’s Juno mission …[READ MORE]

Long ago, sky watchers linked the brightest stars into patterns reflecting animals, heroes, monsters and even scientific instruments into what is now an official collection of 88 constellations. Now scientists with NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space …[READ MORE]

The near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, located approximately 120 million miles from Earth, has a new inhabitant: On 3 October 2018, the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) landed on the asteroid and began to work. The lander …[READ MORE]

A month before the planned launch of the joint ESA-JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury, two new studies shed light on when the innermost planet formed and the puzzle of its chemical composition. The findings are …[READ MORE]

Origami and high-performance textiles are transforming architecture plans for smart human habitats and research stations on the Moon and Mars. Initial field tests of the MoonMars project’s origami prototype have been presented at the European …[READ MORE]

Among the TV series Star Trek’s many charms are its rich universe of characters and planets. Now, the Dharma Planet Survey, in a new study led by University of Florida (UF) astronomer Jian Ge and …[READ MORE]

NASA’s Dawn mission is drawing to a close after 11 years of breaking new ground in planetary science, gathering breathtaking imagery, and performing unprecedented feats of spacecraft engineering. Dawn’s mission was extended several times, outperforming …[READ MORE]