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Extremely low-mass stars, much less massive than the Sun, lack radiative cores—something that could affect their magnetic dynamos. This study reveals that these stars can have magnetic fields that are up to 30% stronger than those of Sun-like stars, implying fundamental differences in their internal magnetic structures.
ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter reveals that the winter night sky on Mars emits visible light between 50 km and 70 km altitude in the polar regions. This nightglow should be observable with simple space camera systems and the naked eyes of future Mars astronauts.
A lensed quasar at redshift z ≈ 10.3, seen in X-rays, hosts a supermassive black hole of mass similar to that of its host galaxy. The large black-hole mass at a young age, as well as the amount of X-rays it produces, suggest that the black hole formed from the collapse of a huge cloud of gas.
The altered and thermally metamorphosed CY chondrites are shown to be the meteoritic analogue of asteroid Phaethon. This suggests that Phaethon’s activity is driven by gas released from the decomposition of near-surficial material heated at perihelion, whereas the interior is kept relatively unaltered and hydrated.
Juno’s close flyby of Ganymede on 7 June 2021 allowed the infrared mapping spectrometer JIRAM to observe the surface at unprecedented spatial resolution. JIRAM’s detailed spectroscopic characterization reveals past extensive aqueous alteration on the moon, possibly together with hydrothermal activity.
Late-phase spectroscopy reveals that explosive nucleosynthesis, occurring in a bipolar collimated configuration, is commonly found for core-collapse supernovae, highlighting the importance of asphericity in shaping these diverse cosmic fireworks.
Venus’s atmosphere is linked to its interior and can be used to infer the planet’s evolution. Observed atmospheric N2, CO2 and surface pressures are best explained by an early phase of plate tectonics, operating for at least 1 billion years.
Space interferometry reveals the hidden and filamentary internal structure of the relativistic jet in 3C 279 at microarcsecond angular resolution. These details challenge previous assumptions on the morphology and radio variability of blazars.
Using NASA’s Juno mission measurements, researchers obtain a new high-precision map of Jupiter’s gravity field and confirm that the planet’s observed strong east–west jet streams penetrate inwards in a direction parallel to the planet’s spin axis.
New northern aurora emissions on Uranus in the infrared spectrum are detected after a 30-year search. The emissions, observed close to equinox, are most likely caused by the 88% increase in upper atmosphere column density.
A rare perfect alignment between two galaxies in the young Universe has been captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. The further (z ≈ 3) galaxy is curved into an Einstein ring due to the bending of space around the nearer (z ≈ 2) galaxy, which is massive and compact—representative of the pristine core of a present-day galaxy.
The repeating fast radio burst (FRB) source FRB 20121102A emits ultra-FRBs that last for only microseconds. These bursts are thousands of times shorter than typical for such astronomical radio flashes and indicate that there is a population of FRBs that has been missed previously.
James Webb Space Telescope observations of Jupiter have unveiled the presence of a narrow and intense atmospheric jet in the equator of the planet near the tropopause. The jet’s speed of 500 km h−1 doubles the speed of the lower clouds. This new jet aligns with temperature and wind oscillations in Jupiter’s stratosphere.
A South China Sea expedition in 2021 identified a 3.5-km-deep site close to the Equator for a next-generation neutrino telescope: TRIDENT. A large array of advanced detectors will be arrayed on the seabed to probe fundamental physics and explore the extreme Universe.
The H.E.S.S. gamma-ray observatory has observed gamma rays with energies of at least 20 TeV from a pulsar, an energy regime that is hard to reconcile with the existing theories of gamma-ray production for such objects.
A statistical study of the ~2.7 µm hydration band in the Ryugu samples shows that Ryugu’s immediate subsurface has not been exposed to space weathering and that even the pristine CI chondrites exhibit terrestrial contamination, making the Hayabusa2 samples a reference for primitive water abundance in carbonaceous asteroids.
A large-scale analysis of quasars reveals that on average, the intrinsic brightness is uniform from the optical to the extreme ultraviolet and is less than expected in the extreme ultraviolet, suggesting prevalent winds that affect black hole growth.
A purpose-built instrument to detect the faint emission lines of the Lyman-α forest provides evidence of filaments that connect galaxies and trace the cosmic web.
Galaxies that formed during the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang have physical properties that deviate from later galaxies, due to substantial gas infall from the intergalactic medium that dilutes the observed chemical enrichment.
Han, Conroy and Hernquist propose a solution to an old problem: the origin of the warp in the Galactic disk. Adopting a dark halo model that is tilted with respect to the disk, the authors reproduce the warp and flare of the disk in the observed direction and magnitude.
