All Stories by Ken Croswell
- Planetary Science
Saturn’s first Trojan asteroid has finally been discovered
Saturn joins the sun’s other giant planets that have Trojans, space rocks that orbit along the same path.
- Astronomy
The nearest midsized black hole might instead be a horde of lightweights
Astronomers recently reported that the Milky Way star cluster Omega Centauri hosts an elusive type of black hole. A new study says it does not.
- Astronomy
A distant quasar may be zapping all galaxies around itself
Star formation has ceased within at least 16 million light-years of the quasar. A similar phenomenon may have fried the Milky Way when it was young.
- Astronomy
The North Star is much heavier than previously thought
Polaris is about five times as massive as the sun, new observations reveal. That’s around 50 percent heavier than what an earlier study found.
- Planetary Science
Sulfur was key to the first water on Earth
Hydrogen bonded with sulfur may have given our world its first water after the hydrogen broke away and joined with oxygen in the planet’s crust.
- Astronomy
The black hole–powered jet in galaxy M87 is making stars explode
Hubble Space Telescope data show a surprising number of nova blasts along the jet of high-speed gas coming from the galaxy M87.
- Astronomy
Jupiter-sized planets are very rare around the least massive stars
A six-year search of 200 nearby low-mass red dwarf stars found no Jupiter-like planets, boosting the standard theory for how such planets form.
- Planetary Science
Saturn’s icy rings are probably heating its atmosphere, giving it an ultraviolet glow
Detecting similar emission from a distant world could help astronomers find other planets that boast bright and beautiful rings.
- Astronomy
The Milky Way may be spawning many more stars than astronomers had thought
Glowing radioactive debris from massive stars indicates our galaxy mints 10 to 20 new stars a year — double to quadruple the standard number.
- Astronomy
Most stars may have much more time to form planets than previously thought
Planet-making disks may survive around most young stars for 5 million to 10 million years — more than double a previous estimate.
- Astronomy
A protogalaxy in the Milky Way may be our galaxy’s original nucleus
Millions of ancient stars spanning about 18,000 light-years at the Milky Way’s heart are the kernel around which the galaxy grew, researchers say.
- Astronomy
The heaviest neutron star on record is 2.35 times the mass of the sun
The measurement helps refine the dividing line between neutron stars and black holes.
