Long-sought auroral glow finally emerges under Webb’s powerful gaze
For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured bright auroral activity on Neptune. Auroras occur when energetic particles, often originating from…
Category: 2. Space
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Life on Mars? NASA’s Curiosity Rover Finds Prebiotic Clues in a 3.7-Billion-Year-Old Rock
NASA’s Curiosity rover has unearthed the largest organic molecules ever detected on Mars—possible fragments of fatty acids—hinting at the tantalizing possibility that prebiotic chemistry on the Red Planet may have been more advanced than…
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NASA’s Parker Solar Probe: The Fastest Spacecraft Ever Just Skimmed the Sun at 430,000 MPH
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe just screamed past the Sun for the 23rd time, once again matching its own records for closest approach and fastest human-made object. Zooming through space at 430,000 mph and skimming just 3.8 million miles from the…
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Discovery of $${{\bf{H}}}_{\mathbf{3}}^{\mathbf{+}}$$ and infrared aurorae at Neptune with JWST
({{rm{H}}}_{3}^{+}) was detected outside the laboratory at Jupiter, Uranus and Saturn more than 30 years ago1,2,3. It is the dominant molecular ion in hydrogen atmospheres4 and the most prevalent molecular ion in interstellar space5. This ion,…
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A lighthouse galaxy shines unexpectedly through the fog of the cosmic dawn
Modern observational cosmology provides a snapshot of the Universe just after its formation in the hot, dense pinprick of the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background radiation,…
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First Daytime Near-infrared Photometric Observations at Antarctic Dome A
The Antarctic plateau, characterized by low temperatures, extremely low levels of water vapor, high altitude, and a stable atmosphere, offers exceptional conditions for observational astronomy. Among its notable locations, Dome A—the highest…
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Witnessing the onset of reionization through Lyman-α emission at redshift 13
Cosmology and conventions
A flat ΛCDM cosmology is used throughout based on the latest results of the Planck Collaboration52, with H0 = 67.4 km s−1 Mpc−1, Ωm = 0.315 and Ωb = 0.0492. The cosmic hydrogen fraction is fixed…
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First Frequency Phase Transfer from the 3 mm to the 1 mm Band on an Earth-sized Baseline
Frequency phase transfer (FPT) is a technique designed to increase coherence and sensitivity in radio interferometry by making use of the nondispersive nature of the troposphere to calibrate high-frequency data using solutions derived at a lower…
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Ripples formed in low-pressure wind tunnels suggest Mars’s large windblown ripples are not impact ripples
Experimental conditions
Experiments were conducted in the Mars Surface Wind Tunnel (MARSWIT) of the Planetary Aeolian Laboratory at the NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California. The MARSWIT is hosted in a pressure chamber that can be…
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Near-infrared [P II] and [Fe II] Emission-line Study of Supernova Remnants in the Magellanic Clouds
We report findings from near-infrared imaging observations of 17 young and middle-aged supernova remnants (SNRs) in the Magellanic Clouds to examine the impact of SNR shocks on dust destruction and the possible detection of supernova ejecta. We…
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