compiled by Arlene and David Kaplan
Orbiting 3 Stars at Once It’s called a circumtriple planet, and evidence that one exists suggests that planet formation is less unusual than once believed. GW Ori is a star system 1,300 light years from Earth in the constellation of Orion. …more
Nasa Selects Landing Site for Moon Rover Mission Nasa is sending a robotic rover to look for water-ice near a crater at the Moon’s South Pole. In 2023, the golf cart-sized vehicle will land near the western edge of Nobile Crater, a 73km-wide depression that is almost permanently in shadow…more
Where NASA Will Send Its First Robotic Moon Rover to Search for Ice The agency picked the Nobile crater near the lunar south pole to seek frozen water that will be essential to future astronaut missions…more
All the World in a ‘Slice’ of Art At 91, Jasper Johns is turning out impressive and touchingly personal work. The newest painting by him was inspired by a fan letter from an astrophysicist. Likely to be a standout of his upcoming show, “Jasper Johns: Mind/Mirror,”…more
James Webb: Hubble successor given Mid-December launch date It’s a date for your diary and one that’s not to be missed. The $10bn James Webb Space Telescope is expected to launch on 18 December. Yes, countless targeted lift-offs have come and gone in the past, but this one has a reality to it that the others didn’t: the successor observatory to Hubble is now actually built…more
Saturn’s Rings Are Like a Seismometer That Reveal the Planet’s Core: Convulsions in the planet’s interior are picked up in the region known as the C ring, and help scientists understand what lies within…more
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Successfully Cores Its First Rock Data received late Sept. 1 from NASA’s Perseverance rover indicate the team has achieved its goal of successfully coring a Mars rock. The initial images downlinked after the historic event show an intact sample present in the tube after coring…more
Carolyn Shoemaker, Hunter of Comets and Asteroids, Dies at 92 After her children left for college, she unexpectedly became astronomy’s record-setting spotter of unidentified objects hurtling through the cosmos. Dr. Shoemaker also worried that a comet hitting Earth could threaten human civilization…more
NASA’s Perseverance Rover Collects First Mars Rock Sample NASA’s Perseverance rover today completed the collection of the first sample of Martian rock, a core from Jezero Crater slightly thicker than a pencil. Mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California received data that confirmed the historic milestone…more
Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell: NI Scientist Awarded Royal Society’s Highest Prize A leading astrophysicist from Northern Ireland has been awarded the world’s oldest scientific prize for her work on the discovery of pulsars. Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell is only the second woman to be awarded the Royal Society’s highest prize, the Copley Medal…more
International Space Station facing irreparable failures, Russia warns The International Space Station (ISS) could suffer “irreparable” failures due to outdated equipment and hardware, a Russian official has warned. At least 80 percent of in-flight systems on the Russian segment of the ISS had passed their expiry date, Vladimir Solovyov told state media….more
One of the largest comets ever seen is headed our way. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein offers a rare opportunity for a generation of astronomers to study an object from the extreme edges of the solar system. More than 2.7 billion miles from the sun—29 times farther than Earth treads—a tiny sliver of sunlight reflected off something plummeting…more
Amateur Astronomers Association of Princeton 