3+ day, 17+ hour ago   (924+ words) Hubble has found a growing ten-sided atmospheric wave around Saturn’s south pole—the first large regular-sided jet seen there. Saturn has long been known for a strange shape in its clouds. A vast hexagon circles the planet’s north pole, holding…...

4+ day, 23+ hour ago   (495+ words) giving astronomers a new counterpart to the planet’s famous northern hexagon. The southern pattern appears to be evolving, raising a question that a single striking image cannot answer: will it become another enduring feature of the planet’s weather? A study…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (743+ words) Comets are usually introduced through their tails, but a recent Subaru Telescope observation captured one without the cloud that gives a comet its familiar appearance. Comet 28P/Neujmin was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun—farther out than Saturn—when…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (693+ words) A chemical survey of 91 Bronze Age iron artefacts found that a small group of rings probably came from meteorites. Their tomb contexts suggest that “iron from the sky” carried status long before iron smelting became common. Long before iron ore…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (405+ words) Boyajian’s Star may have a large companion orbiting it, according to a new study of the system’s motion. The best estimate puts the object at about 9.4 times the mass of Jupiter, but the uncertainty extends well into brown-dwarf territory. That…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (216+ words) China says its Chang’e-7 lunar south-pole mission will not launch in the planned 2026 window. Here is what the mission is designed to investigate. China has postponed the Chang’e-7 mission, its most ambitious attempt yet to study the Moon’s south polar…...

3+ week, 21+ hour ago   (721+ words) Interstellar visitors are hard to find and even harder to classify. Survivorship bias may shape what we think we know about objects like ‘Oumuamua and 3I/ATLAS. Astronomers have confirmed three visitors from beyond the Solar System: 1I/‘Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS....

4+ week, 22+ hour ago   (565+ words) Most comets and asteroids that pass through the Solar System are permanent residents. The Sun’s gravity keeps them on closed orbits, even when those orbits take thousands of years to complete. An interstellar object is different. It arrives on a…...