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Cassini milestones before the final plunge
Milestones for Cassini's final week at Saturn. Today's distant flyby of the large moon Titan will slow down the spacecraft enough so that - on Friday - Cassini will make its final plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.
September 11, 2017
Most detailed color images of Saturn’s rings, ever
As we prepare to say goodbye to Cassini at Saturn - one of the longest-running and most awesome space missions ever - here's yet another first, a finely seen section of Saturn's inner-central B Ring, in natural color.
September 11, 2017
Ultraviolet light key to life search, too?
Too little UV light, and life might not ever start. Too much, in the form dramatic UV flares from stars, and the atmospheres of orbiting planets might undergo damage.
September 10, 2017
X-ray astronomy and planet-hosting stars
X-ray astronomers explored how quickly young stars settle down after blasting the space around themselves - including any possible planets - with energetic radiation.
September 10, 2017
What drives Jupiter’s brightest auroras?
The sun drives Earth's auroras. But Jupiter’s brightest auroras may be accelerated by processes within the giant planet's own magnetic field.
September 9, 2017
Pluto features get names
The 14 geological features are the first to be officially named, following the New Horizons spacecraft's close flyby of Pluto in July 2015.
September 8, 2017
Asteroid 3122 Florence: Video and images
This large asteroid swept closest to Earth on September 1. It's big enough that astronomers are still catching it in small telescopes, as a small, slow-moving “star.”
September 8, 2017
How many house-sized NEOs?
A new study shows house-sized NEOs - Near-Earth Objects - to be 10 times fewer than studies had indicated. Still, there are some 3.5 million NEOs larger than 10 meters across.
September 5, 2017
Artificial intelligence probes gravity’s lens
Researchers at SLAC and Stanford have been using brain-mimicking neural networks to analyze the spacetime distortions of gravitational lenses. They say their analysis is 10 million times faster than before.
September 5, 2017
Millions of stars
This image sequence from ESA's billion-star surveyor - Gaia - looks toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy and captures some 2.8 million stars.
September 4, 2017
