Astronomers catch a comet outburst

Remember comet 46P/Wirtanen? It was a bright comet about this time last year. Around the time it swept near the Earth and sun, the comet entered the field of view NASA’s TESS planet-hunter. And boom! It underwent an outburst, caught by TESS.

This white dwarf star has a giant, evaporating planet

White dwarf stars are typically more or less Earth-sized. The planet orbiting white dwarf WDJ0914+1914 appears to be at least twice as big as its star! High intensity radiation from its star is causing this planet to evaporate. Will the same thing happen in our solar system someday?

Parker Solar Probe sheds light on our local star

Parker Solar Probe - now in its 4th orbit around the sun - can endure heat and radiation like no previous mission. This week, 4 new studies in Nature reveal new insights about the sun's mysterious corona and solar wind.

How does the solar wind affect Earth?

Why should we care about the new findings - released this week - from NASA's Parker Solar Probe? This new NASA video explains how the solar wind - a stream of charged particles from the sun - affects earthly astronauts and technologies.

Chennai engineer helped find India’s Vikram lander, which crashed on the moon

In September, India hoped to become the 4th nation to soft land on the moon successfully with its Chandrayaan 2 mission. Moments before touchdown, the mission's Vikram lander crashed. Now the lander has been found again.

Did this black hole swallow a star?

We know of a couple of dozen so-called "stellar-mass" black holes in our Milky Way galaxy. They tend to be between about 5 and 20 times as heavy as our sun. This new black hole - in a distant spiral arm of the galaxy - is 70 times as heavy as the sun.

Does complex life exist elsewhere? Study of exoplanet-tilts boosts hopes

A new study focuses on the axial tilt of Earthlike exoplanets in binary or double star systems. It boosts hope for complex life elsewhere ... although not, these astronomers say, within the star system closest to our sun.

Thousands of exoplanets may orbit supermassive black holes

It sounds unbelievable, but a new study from Kagoshima University and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan says that exoplanets - thousands of them - could be orbiting supermassive black holes.

Was ‘Oumuamua a cosmic dust bunny?

'Oumuamua - the weird object that entered our solar system in 2017 and quickly fled back toward interstellar space - might not be an asteroid or comet from a distant solar system, as many believed. It might instead be a "cosmic dust bunny."

Scientists confirm Europa’s water vapor geysers … maybe

New observations appear to confirm the existence of water vapor geysers on Europa. The findings are tantalizing, but some scientists are not convinced yet.