compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

What NASA’s Crash Into an Asteroid Looks Like NASA’s DART spacecraft was not able to take pictures of the very moment it slammed into an asteroid on Monday at more than 14,000 miles per hour. Or the aftermath. But telescopes on Earth, seven million miles away, were watching. The images they recorded revealed a spectacular outburst of debris rising from the asteroid after the collision…more

Maarten Schmidt, First Astronomer to Identify a Quasar, Dies at 92 Maarten Schmidt, who in 1963 became the first astronomer to identify a quasar, a small, intensely bright object several billion light years away, and in the process upended standard descriptions of the universe and revolutionized ideas about its evolution, died on Sept. 17 at his home in Fresno, Calif. He was 92…more

Neptune and Its Rings Come Into Focus With Webb Telescope No spacecraft has visited Neptune since 1989, when the NASA probe Voyager 2 flew past on its way out of the solar system. Neptune, which is four times as wide as Earth, is the most distant planet of our solar system. Voyager 2’s observations whetted the appetites of astronomers, who were eager to learn more about the ice giant…more

China’s Discovery of Lunar Mineral Could Add to Fuller View of the Moon Scientists found a single crystal of a new phosphate mineral while analyzing lunar basalt particles, which were collected from the moon two years ago by the Chang’e-5 mission. In December 2020, it became the first country in about four decades to bring back lunar rocks and soil, amassing several pounds of samples, experts said…more

Mars Is Mighty in First Webb Observations of Red Planet NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured its first images and spectra of Mars Sept. 5. The telescope, an international collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), provides a unique perspective with its infrared sensitivity on our neighboring planet, complementing data being collected by orbiters, rovers, and other telescopes…more

Webb reveals a galaxy sparkling with the universe’s oldest star clusters Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), researchers from the CAnadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) team have identified the most distant globular clusters ever discovered. These dense groups of millions of stars may be relics that contain the first and oldest stars in the universe…more

The composition of asteroidal cores in the early solar system Iron meteorites of the solar system are composed of parent cores belonging to the earliest credited bodies of the environment. The cores are formed in two isotopically distinct reservoirs including non-carbonaceous and carbonaceous types in the inner and outer solar system. In a new report…more

New evidence for liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars An international team of researchers has revealed new evidence for the possible existence of liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars. The researchers, led by the University of Cambridge, used spacecraft laser-altimeter measurements of the shape of the upper surface of the ice cap…more

Milky Way’s graveyard of dead stars found The first map of the “galactic underworld”—a chart of the corpses of once massive suns that have since collapsed into black holes and neutron stars—has revealed a graveyard that stretches three times the height of the Milky Way…more

Hubble detects protective shield defending a pair of dwarf galaxies For billions of years, the Milky Way’s largest satellite galaxies—the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds—have followed a perilous journey. Orbiting one another as they are pulled in toward our home galaxy, they have begun to unravel, leaving behind trails of gaseous debris. And yet—to the puzzlement of astronomers—these dwarf galaxies remain intact…more