Volume 6 Issue 4, April 2022

As a result of the ongoing conflict, long-standing collaborations in astronomy and space are jeopardized and individual researchers are facing difficult choices that will have a long-term impact on the advancement of science.

The return to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan makes women and girls outcasts in society, and their education illegal. However, they are clever and deserve to be taught and learn, and for that international (financial) support is needed.

Cultural astronomy reveals ways in which perception and culture have shaped the interpretation of the night sky.

Judith Pipher, who passed away on 21 February 2022, was a pioneer in the field of infrared astronomy and a role model, teacher, advisor and more.

Conflicting methodologies for estimating the CO₂ intensity of the space sector are beginning to emerge because of a lack of publicly available data, resulting in extensive variations that undermine the credibility of reported results.

Venus is used as the paradigm of Earth-sized near tidally locked planets. The behaviour and dynamics of its atmosphere are used to gain insight into the climate of terrestrial exoplanets with similar orbital configurations.

Crowded with satellites and debris, the orbital space around the Earth should be formally recognized as an ecosystem—like the ocean and the atmosphere—to ensure sustainable development and protection from irreversible damage.

Laboratory experiments show that the type of iron mineral is the dominant factor controlling the chlorate/perchlorate (ClO₃⁻/ClO₄⁻) generation ratio on Mars over oxidation methods or atmospheric composition. Chlorate yields are found to exceed perchlorate yields by orders of magnitude in the current desiccated Martian conditions.

Non-thermal, hard X-ray bremsstrahlung emission from auroral regions is detected at Jupiter by the NuSTAR instrument. Simultaneous in situ observations from the Juno spacecraft confirm the signatures of acceleration from non-thermal electrons and highlight the similarities with auroral processes on Earth.

The rich transmission spectrum of exoplanet WASP-189 b reveals its dynamical atmosphere with a three-dimensional thermochemical stratification, requiring the unification of dynamical, thermal and chemical models for its study.

The hydrogen isotopic composition of the oldest Solar System rocks demonstrates that a gaseous reservoir of terrestrial isotopic composition existed as early as the onset of Solar System formation and coexisted with the solar gas.

The presence of a scalar charge around a small compact object during its final inspiral into a supermassive black hole could be detected by LISA, providing a way to test deviations from general relativity and the existence of new fields in nature.

Ultrahot giant planet WASP-121b has a stratosphere that warms up with altitude during the day and cools down with altitude during the night. This trend is in agreement with predictions from circulation models in chemical equilibrium. Efficient vertical mixing hinders condensation of at least some refractory materials.

The distribution of the slowly rotating, blue fraction of main-sequence stars in the colour–magnitude diagram of young star clusters, and their peculiar mass function, imply that they may originate from binary star mergers.

A young and low-energy radio jet has cleared a substantial amount of gas from the central region of galaxy B2 0258+35, demonstrating the effectiveness of kiloparsec-scale feedback from radio-loud active galactic nuclei and supporting the predictions of simulations.

A cosmological simulation shows that low-mass galaxies can form with far less dark matter than expected, with results matching some observed characteristics. Roughly one-third of massive central galaxies may host at least one such dark-matter-deficient satellite.

Astronomical research facilities, such as space telescopes, space probes or ground-based observatories, are the largest contributor to an astronomer’s carbon footprint, well beyond other activities such as flying to conferences or running computer simulations.