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It’s finally happened. With the first detection of a neutron star merger by LIGO and Virgo, astronomers have at long last begun the exploration of multi-messenger gravitational-wave astrophysics.
Complex organics are now observed throughout the Universe, forming in the circumstellar environments over thousands of years and providing materials for star formation. Did the Earth inherit any of these organics at the time of its formation?
The Event Horizon Telescope, an Earth-sized interferometer, aims to capture an image of a black hole’s event horizon to test the theory of general relativity and probe accretion processes, explains project director Shep Doeleman.
Internationally respected astronomer and renowned comet physics expert Michael Francis A’Hearn (1940–2017) passed away on 29 May 2017 at the age of 76.
Our inventory of the molecular universe is continually progressing. Our understanding of the astrochemistry behind it will flourish if we are mindful of funding experimental and theoretical efforts as well as observational.
The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini–Huygens mission ends in a ‘Grand Finale’ this month, after 13 years in orbit around Saturn. The ESA and NASA JPL project scientists Nicolas Altobelli, Linda J. Spilker and Scott G. Edgington give an overview of the last moments of Cassini’s operational lifetime.
Cassini has been a pinnacle of our quest for the understanding of the space around us. Its end symbolically marks the beginning of a period of relative dearth for Solar System exploration, but planetary science won’t stop thriving.
