Carolyn Collins Petersen
Neutron Stars Could be Capturing Primordial Black Holes
The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to explain this for years. One…
NASA Restores Communications with Voyager 1
The venerable Voyager 1 spacecraft is finally phoning home again. This is much to the relief of mission engineers, scientists,…
Artemis Astronauts Will Deploy New Seismometers on the Moon
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers to detect possible Moon quakes.…
More Views of the 2024 Eclipse, from the Moon and Earth Orbit
It's been just over a week since millions of people flocked to places across North America for a glimpse of…
Webb Watches the Most Distant Galactic Merger Ever Seen
Astronomers know that galaxies form through mergers. They've been happening since the earliest epochs of cosmic time. Using the Webb…
What Can Europa’s Surface Tell Us About the Thickness of Its Ice?
You can tell a lot about a planetary body just by looking at its surface, especially if it has craters.…
Finally, an Explanation for the “String of Pearls” in Supernova 1987A
Not long after the explosion of Supernova 1987a, astronomers were abuzz with predictions about how it might look in a…
Webb Reveals Secrets of Neptune’s Evolution
A twinset of icy asteroids called Mors-Somnus is giving planetary scientists some clues about the origin and evolution of objects…
The Maximum Mass of a Neutron Star is 2.25 Solar Masses
When stars grow old and die, their mass determines their ultimate fate. Many supermassive stars have futures as neutron stars.…
Webb Sees a Star-Forming Region Blowing Vast Bubbles
Star birth is a messy and chaotic event. Some of the process remains well hidden behind clouds of gas and…