Tag: science

Radar images of near Earth asteroid as it zipped past the Earth

9:11 am

Radar images of near Earth asteroid
Click for original. Go here for movie made from these images.

Using the Goldstone radar antenna in California, astronomers have produced a series of 41 radar images of the near Earth asteroid 2025 OW as it made a close pass of the Earth on July 28, 2025.

Those images, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, are to the right.

The asteroid safely passed at about 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers), or 1.6 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

The asteroid was discovered on July 4, 2025, by the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS2 survey telescope on Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii. These Goldstone observations suggest that 2025 OW is about 200 feet (60 meters) wide and has an irregular shape. The observations also indicate that it is rapidly spinning, completing one rotation every 1½ to 3 minutes, making it one of the fastest-spinning near-Earth asteroids that the powerful radar system has observed. The observations resolve surface features down to 12 feet (3.75 meters) wide.

The asteroid’s fast rotation suggests it is a solid object, structurally strong, rather than a rubble pile held together loosely by gravity. It would thus be very damaging if it should ever hit the Earth.

No worries however. The refined orbital data says this asteroid will not come this close again in the foreseeable future.

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Webb: Evidence of gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of Alpha Centuri

2:54 pm

Webb infrared data
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope now think they have detected a gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of the Alpha Centuri triple star system, the closest star to our Sun at only four light years distance.

The false-color image to the right shows the candidate exoplanet labeled as S1, with the light of the central star blocked out but indicated by the star at the center. A lot of processing was required to bring out this bright blob, including eliminating optical effects that normally act to hide such objects.

Alpha Centauri, located in the far southern sky, is made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.

Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. …Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.

If confirmed the exoplanet would be orbiting the star within the habitable zone, though as a gas giant life as we know it would likely be impossible. The location, only four light years away, makes this exoplanet and the entire system a prime target for further observations.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter photographs Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander

2:27 pm

Athena as seen by Chandrayaan-2
Click for source.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter has now produced a new high resolution image of Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander, sitting on its side inside a small crater near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-2 ‘Athena’ lander attempted a soft touchdown near the Moon’s South Pole on 6 March, 2025. Although the lander remained intact, it failed to reach its intended landing spot and ended up tipping over on its side inside a crater.

In the … images taken by the OHRC instrument on board the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, the Athena lander can be clearly seen lying on its side inside a crater.

This image, posted to the right, compares very favorably with the photos taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in March 2025. The lander’s legs can clearly be seen sticking out toward the top of the picture.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Astronomers claim to discover biggest supermassive black hole yet

2:17 pm

The Cosmic Horseshoe
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers now believe they have discovered the heaviest supermassive black hole yet found, with a mass thought to be equivalent to 36 billion solar masses and located at the center of a distant galaxy they have dubbed The Cosmic Horseshoe.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. You can read the science paper here.

Researchers detected the Cosmic Horseshoe black hole using a combination of gravitational lensing and stellar kinematics (the study of the motion of stars within galaxies and the speed and way they move around black holes). The latter is seen as the gold standard for measuring black hole masses, but doesn’t really work outside of the very nearby universe because galaxies appear too small on the sky to resolve the region where a supermassive or ultramassive black hole lies.

Adding in gravitational lensing helped the team “push much further out into the universe”, Professor Collett said.

There is a blue-colored galaxy directly behind the Horseshoe, whose light is lensed into the blue circle as it passes through the black hole’s massive gravitational field.

It is believed, based on present theories, that this black hole is at the uppermost limit possible in mass. It also must be underlined that there are many uncertainties in this data.

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Strange rocks on Mars

11:25 am

Coral on Mount Sharp!
Click for original image.

Float rock in Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Time for two cool images, from two different craters separated by thousands of miles on Mars! The first image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 24, 2025 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the robot arm of Mars rover Curiosity, and shows a really strange rock formation that resembles a piece of coral on Earth.

Curiosity has found many small features like this one, which formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars [in this region]. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing unique shapes.

The second image, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 5, 2025 by the left high resolution camera on the rover Perseverance. It shows what appears what geologists call a “float rock”, something that was created geologically somewhere else and transported to this location later.

In this case the rock appears lavalike in nature. Since Perseverance is exploring the exterior rim of Jezero Crater, we could be looking at the impact melt created when the bolide hit the ground to create the crater. Material would be instantly melted as well as flung outward as ejecta, with this strangely shaped rock an example.

The problem with this theory however is that the rock appears to have solidified well before it hit the ground at this location. Its shape also suggests it solidified within a crack, thus molding it to this shape, with its top once at the bottom, the lava flowing downward. The mystery then is how it ended up as we see it, upside down and exposed.

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New Hubble observations of Comet 3I/Atlas refine its size

10:42 am

3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble on July 21, 2025
Click for original image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have refined significantly the size of the interstellar object Comet 3I/Atlas as it zips through the solar system in its journey through the galaxy.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a Hubble image taken on July 21, 2025. The streaks are background stars.

Hubble’s observations allow astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s solid, icy nucleus. The upper limit on the diameter of the nucleus is 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers), though it could be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters) across, researchers report. Though the Hubble images put tighter constraints on the size of the nucleus compared to previous ground-based estimates, the solid heart of the comet presently cannot be directly seen, even by Hubble.

…Hubble also captured a dust plume ejected from the Sun-warmed side of the comet, and the hint of a dust tail streaming away from the nucleus. Hubble’s data yields a dust-loss rate consistent with comets that are first detected around 300 million miles from the Sun. This behavior is much like the signature of previously seen Sun-bound comets originating within our solar system.

In other words, though this object comes from far outside our solar system, it so far appears to closely resemble comets from our own system. If confirmed, this fact is quite significant, as it suggests the formation of solar systems throughout the galaxy are likely to be relatively similar to our own.

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Hera photographs two main belt asteroids on its way to Didymos/Dimorphos

10:12 am

Asteroid Otero as seen by Hera
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The science team for the European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid probe, on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos in late 2026, has successfully taken images of two different main belt asteroids, demonstrating once again that its camera and pointing capabilities are operating as expected.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced, shows all the observations of Otero, the first asteroid observed, as it moved upward in the field of view. The result was that vertical line of dots.

On 11 May 2025, as Hera cruised through the main asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars, the spacecraft turned its attention toward Otero, a rare A-type asteroid discovered almost 100 years ago.

From a distance of approximately three million kilometres, Otero appeared as a moving point of light – easily mistaken for a star if not for its subtle motion across the background sky. Hera captured images of Otero using its Asteroid Framing Camera – a navigational and scientific instrument that will be used to guide the spacecraft during its approach to Didymos next year.

The second observation of asteroid Kellyday was even less spectacular visually, but because that asteroid was forty times fainter than Otero, the observation was more challenging, and thus its success more significant.

Hera will arrive at the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid in 2026, where it will make close-up observations of the changes the asteroids have undergone following Dart’s impact of Dimorphos in 2022. Subsequent ground- and space-based observations have been extensive and on-going, but the close-up view will be ground-breaking.

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China completes landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander

9:49 am

China's manned lunar lander during landing and take-off tests
Click for original image.

China announced today that it has successfully completed landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander.

That lander is shown to the right, its engines firing as its likely descends, held up by cables to simulate the lunar gravity. From the caption:

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency.

History buffs will immediately notice the similarity of this lander to the Lunar Module (LM) that the U.S. used during the Apollo missions. What is not clear is whether the lander will have a separate descent and ascent stage, as the LM did, and if so, whether these flight tests included separate operations of each.

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Sunspot update: The Sun appears ready to once again confound the experts

1:12 pm

It is the start of the month and time once again for my monthly sunspot update, using the update that NOAA posts each month to its own graph of sunspot activity but annotated by me with extra information to illustrate the larger scientific context.

This month’s update graph is below, and it shows once again that it is a big mistake to put any faith into any prediction anyone makes about the Sun’s eleven-year sunspot cycle, tracked by scientists since the 1700s. Beginning in April 2025 the NOAA solar science panel has been predicting that the solar maximum had hit its peak and that we should expect the Sun to begin its ramp down to solar minimum, expected around 2031.

NOT!
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NASA officially ends failed Lunar Trailblazer mission

9:27 am

NASA on August 4, 2025 officially ended its months-long effort to recover its Lunar Trailblazer mission that failed almost immediately after launch in February.

Lunar Trailblazer shared a ride on the second Intuitive Machines robotic lunar lander mission, IM-2, which lifted off at 7:16 p.m. EST on Feb. 26 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The small satellite separated as planned from the rocket about 48 minutes after launch to begin its flight to the Moon. Mission operators at Caltech’s IPAC in Pasadena established communications with the small spacecraft at 8:13 p.m. EST. Contact was lost the next day.

Without two-way communications, the team was unable to fully diagnose the spacecraft or perform the thruster operations needed to keep Lunar Trailblazer on its flight path.

This failure of a NASA-built and operated lunar orbiter contrasts starkly with the success of the privately-built and operated Capstone mission. Contact with that spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, was also lost soon after launch, but the company doing mission control, Advanced Space, was able to re-establish contract and get the spacecraft into lunar orbit, where it continues to function as planned.

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New data raises doubts about exoplanet having chemicals that on Earth come from life

1:02 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using new data from the Webb Space Telescope, scientists now conclude that the identification on an exoplanet in April 2025 of the molecules dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) — both of which on Earth are only associated with the presence of life — is now uncertain and that these molecules likely aren’t there.

The new work uses [Webb] data to better qualify what is going on. The work confirms the presence of an ocean on this peculiar exoplanet, although it can’t confirm if there is a thick or thin atmosphere. They couldn’t find water vapor in the atmosphere, suggesting that there is an efficient cold trap, keeping evaporation to a minimum on this temperate sub-Neptune world.

Those potential biosignatures were all below the threshold for an undeniable detection, and their model suggests that a possible presence of DMS could be explained by sources unrelated to life. They advise considering more and different molecules to use as biosignatures. Astronomers are studying worlds that are very different from our own, and the chemical signatures that seem obvious here on Earth might not fit well with those exoplanets.

In other words, they simply don’t have enough data to know, one way or the other. No surprise, The science of studying exoplanets is in its infancy, and right now can only tease out the smallest of details based on our limited technology and the distances involved.

You can read the new paper here [pdf]. It notes further that using these molecules as a sign of life is also a mistake, as they can be created in other ways having nothing to do with biology.

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Curiosity looks back

10:12 am

Curiosity looks back
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 28, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks to the north, down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its mountainous rim about 30 miles way, seen on the horizon.

The view is so clear because of the season, as noted in the science team’s blog post today:

We’re still in the time of year where the atmosphere at Gale is reasonably dust-free (at least, compared to later in the year), allowing us to look all the way out to and beyond the Gale crater rim. The upper slopes of Mount Sharp have also re-emerged to our east after spending months hidden behind the walls of Gediz Vallis. There’s a bit more sand and dust in this location than we’ve seen recently, so we can also see the trail left behind by the rover’s wheels as we drove to this location

The ridge in the foreground is an example of the boxwork Curiosity is presently traversing. It is now on one of those ridges, and will be moving along it in short drives as the science team studies the geology here. The rover’s tracks leading up to this position can be seen clearly.
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A Webb false color image of a planetary nebula

9:32 am

A Webb false color image of a planetary nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today by the science team of the Webb Space Telescope, showing the planetary nebula NGC 6072 in infrared false color.

This particular image was one of two taken by Webb, and looked at the nebula in the near infrared.

[I]t’s readily apparent that this nebula is multi-polar. This means there are several different elliptical outflows jetting out either way from the center, one from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock, another from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock. The outflows may compress material as they go, resulting in a disk seen perpendicular to it. Astronomers say this is evidence that there are likely at least two stars at the center of this scene. Specifically, a companion star is interacting with an aging star that had already begun to shed some of its outer layers of gas and dust.

The central region of the planetary nebula glows from the hot stellar core, seen as a light blue hue in near-infrared light. The dark orange material, which is made up of gas and dust, follows pockets or open areas that appear dark blue. This clumpiness could be created when dense molecular clouds formed while being shielded from hot radiation from the central star. There could also be a time element at play. Over thousands of years, inner fast winds could be ploughing through the halo cast off from the main star when it first started to lose mass.

The second image, taken in the mid-infrared, shows expanding dust shells, with some forming an encircling ring around the central nebula.

It is believed that the two stars at the center of this nebula act to churn the expanding material to form this complex shape. Imagine them functioning almost like the blades in a blender.

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Thales Alenia ships the orbit insertion module for the Mars sample return mission

8:59 am

Though the entire project remains in limbo at NASA and might be cancelled, the European aerospace company Thales Alenia this week completed construction of the orbit insertion module for the Mars sample return mission that will place the orbiter — also built by European companies — in Mars orbit and will eventually bring the samples back to Earth.

On 28 July, Thales Alenia Space announced that the module had passed its test campaign with “excellent results.” According to the update, the company had packed and shipped the Orbit Insertion Module from its Turin facilities to Airbus in Stevenage a few days earlier. The delivery marks a key milestone in the development of the Mars Return Orbiter.

The broader Earth Return Orbiter project passed a key milestone in July 2024 with the completion of the Platform Critical Design Review. This review confirmed the performance, quality, and reliability of the mission’s systems. With its successful conclusion, Airbus advanced to full spacecraft development, including the integration and testing of its various components, among them the Orbit Insertion Module.

Under the project’s present very complex design, NASA is supposed to provide the ascent rocket and capsule to bring the samples to Europe’s return orbiter. At the moment it is unclear who will build this, or even if it will ever get built. Thus, Europe might be building a very expensive Mars orbiter with no clear mission.

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Firefly wins new NASA lunar lander contract, worth $176.7 million

8:52 am

NASA announced yesterday that it has awarded Firefly a $176.7 million contract to use the company’s Blue Ghost lunar lander to deliver two rovers and three other science instruments to the Moon’s south pole region.

Under the new CLPS task order, Firefly is tasked with delivering end-to-end payload services to the lunar surface, with a period of performance from Tuesday to March 29, 2030. The company’s lunar lander is targeted to land at the Moon’s South Pole region in 2029.

This is Firefly’s fifth task order award and fourth lunar mission through CLPS. Firefly’s first delivery successfully landed on the Moon’s near side in March 2025 with 10 NASA payloads. The company’s second mission, targeting a launch in 2026, includes a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side. Firefly’s third lunar mission will target landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028, delivering six experiments to study that enigmatic lunar volcanic terrain.

One of the rovers is being built in partnership with Canada.

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Third star destroying part of expanding shells surrounding binary Wolf-Rayet stars

3:00 pm

Apep system.
From figure 3 of the paper.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers think they can now disentangle the strange spiral shape of the expanding dust shells caused by the colliding powerful winds flowing from a binary pair of giant aging Wolf-Rayet stars, dubbed the Apep system.

Apparently, a third smaller O-type star sits in the system, and is acting to block the winds and destroy the dust within them, carving out a large cavity in the spiral shells. The image to the right, produced by the Very Large Telescope in Chile, shows the spiral dust shells shaped by the strong solar winds flowing and colliding from the binary Wolf-Rayet stars (the bright dot in the center). The O-type star can be seen just above them. The yellow lines indicate the empty cone. Without the O star computer models had predicted a very bright shell north of the binary, and its non-existence in VLT images caused these further Webb observations.

From the paper’s [pdf] conclusion:

The JWST observations of Apep reveal luminous circumstellar dust that support[s] … our finding that the O supergiant ‘northern companion’ is dynamically associated with the binary WR stars in Apep; this is the first time that dust destruction has been observed by a tertiary star in a colliding wind nebula, and marks Apep as part of a rare class of triple colliding wind binaries.

The dust produced by Wolf-Rayet stars is thought to be a major component in seeding the formation of later stars, such as our own Sun. Finding that a third star in the system can destroy that dust suggests (as always) that this process can be far more complicated that first believed.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Galaxies without end

8:55 am

Galaxies without end
Click for original.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a monitoring program studying the two supernovae that have occurred in this galaxy previously.

Hubble has turned its attention toward NGC 1309 several times; previous Hubble images of this galaxy were released in 2006 and 2014. Much of NGC 1309’s scientific interest derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was a perfect example of a Type Ia supernova, which happens when the core of a dead star (a white dwarf) explodes.

SN 2012Z, on the other hand, was a bit of a renegade. It was classified as a Type Iax supernova: while its spectrum resembled that of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion wasn’t as bright as expected. Hubble observations showed that in this case, the supernova did not destroy the white dwarf completely, leaving behind a ‘zombie star’ that shone even brighter than it did before the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken across several years also made this the first time the white dwarf progenitor of a supernova has been identified in images taken before the explosion.

The image however carries a far more philosophic component. Except for the star near the top (identified by the four diffraction spikes), every single dot and smudge you see in this picture is a galaxy. NGC 1309 is about 100 million light years away, but behind it along its line of sight and at much greater distances are innumerable other galaxies, so many it is impossible to count them. And each is roughly comparable in size to our own Milky Way galaxy, containing billions of stars.

The scale of the universe is simply impossible to grasp, no matter how hard we might try.

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One of NASA’s two Tracers satellites just launched has an issue

10:17 am

During the commissioning phase shortly after their launch earlier this week, one of NASA’s two Tracers satellites designed to study the solar wind and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field has had an as yet unnamed issue.

During the commissioning process, the team made routine adjustments to the power subsystem on both vehicles. While the adjustments achieved the desired results on one satellite, the other satellite requires further investigation by the team. Commissioning operations are temporarily paused while the team analyzes the situation and determines the appropriate response.

Though the press release provides no other information, it appears the satellite is having a problem producing the power expected.

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Mars and its two moons seen in the infrared by Europa Clipper

10:37 am

Mars and its two moons
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Cool image time! The infrared image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Europa Clipper on February 28, 2025 just before it flew past Mars on its way to Jupiter.

Deimos is in the upper left corner, while Phobos is close to Mars.

When the image was taken by the mission’s Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), the spacecraft was about 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from the Red Planet. The image is composed of 200 individual frames, part of a continuous scan of 1,100 frames taken roughly a second apart over a period of 20 minutes. Scientists are using the tiny, point-like images of the moons to check the camera’s focus.

As this is an infrared image (measuring heat), it shows Mars’ northern polar cap as the dark oval at the top of the planet. The bright (and thus warmer) oval to the lower left is the shield volcano Elysium Mons.

This data suggests Europa Clipper’s thermal instrument is working as intended, which is essential for observing the ice content (if any) on Europa once it enters Jupiter orbit in 2030.

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The journal Science retracts 15-year-old paper that proposed arsenic as basic element of life

10:15 am

The death of science: Though numerous later research had rejected the conclusions of a 2010 research paper that had suggested a bacteria found at Mono Lake in Californa was using arsenic instead of phosphorus in its DNA, the journal Science that published that paper has now retracted it.

In a blog post accompanying this week’s retraction notice, Science’s current Editor-in-Chief Holden Thorp and Valda Vinson, executive editor of the Science family of journals, emphasize there is no suggestion of foul play in the GFAJ-1 paper. Instead, pointing to subsequent commentary and research that suggest some of the paper’s findings stem from contamination, not arsenic use by bacteria, they write: “Science believes that the key conclusion of the paper is based on flawed data.”

Speaking with Science’s News team, which operates independently from its research arm, study co-author and Arizona State University geochemist Ariel Anbar says the team disputes that assessment and has already addressed the referenced criticisms. “We stand by the data,” he adds.

Anbar added this in this report at Nature:

By contrast, one of the paper’s authors, Ariel Anbar, a geochemist at Arizona State University in Tempe, says that there are no mistakes in the paper’s data. He says that the data could be interpreted in a number of ways, but “you don’t retract because of a dispute about data interpretation”. If that’s the standard you were to apply, he says, “you’d have to retract half the literature”.

This action underlines the decline in open-mindedness in the academic field. It did not suffice to simply demonstrate in later papers that the paper’s conclusions were questionable. It was necessary to cancel it entirely, to airbrush it from history.

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The glaciers on Mars are almost pure ice with only a thin cover of dust and debris

9:55 am

A map of glaciers on Mars
A map of glaciers on Mars.

According to new research, scientists now think that the glaciers on Mars are almost pure ice, protected from sublimation by a thin cover of dust and debris.

Work over the last 20 years has demonstrated that at least some of these glaciers are mostly pure ice with only a thin cover of rock and dust, but according to a new paper published in Icarus, glaciers all over the planet actually contain more than 80% water ice, a significant finding. Ultimately, this means that Mars’s glacial ice deposits are nearly pure across the globe, providing a clearer understanding of Mars’ climate history and a possible resource for future utilization.

The researchers analyzed mid-latitude glaciers at five different locations in both the north and south hemispheres, and found that at every location the data suggested almost pure ice.

The map to the right, from earlier research, shows the prevalence of near-surface ice once you get above 30 degrees latitude. From the poles to the mid-latitudes it appears there is an ice sheet or “ice table” just below the surface. In the mid-latitudes glaciers dominate, as this appears to be the region where that ice is beginning to dissipate. In the equatorial regions little or no near-surface ice has been detected, though there has been some evidence in some places of ice at deeper depths.

This data once again demonstrates that Mars is not a desert like the Sahara, as we once believed. Instead, it more resembles Antarctica, where there is ice everywhere that simply needs to be processed for use.

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Study identifies range of interference produced by Starlink satellites

8:58 am

In analyzing about 76 million radio images produced by the new Square Kilometer Array (SKA) in Australia scientists have found within them signals produced by SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.

PhD candidate and study lead Dylan Grigg said the team detected more than 112,000 radio emissions from 1806 Starlink satellites, making it the most comprehensive catalogue of satellite radio emissions at low frequencies to date. “Starlink is the most immediate and frequent source of potential interference for radio astronomy: it launched 477 satellites during this study’s four-month data collection period alone,” Mr Grigg said. “In some datasets, we found up to 30 per cent of our images showed interference from a Starlink satellite.”

Mr Grigg said the issue wasn’t just the number of satellites, but the strength of the signals and the frequencies they were visible at. “Some satellites were detected emitting in bands where no signals are supposed to be present at all, such as the 703 satellites we identified at 150.8 MHz, which is meant to be protected for radio astronomy,” Mr Grigg said. “Because they may come from components like onboard electronics and they’re not part of an intentional signal, astronomers can’t easily predict them or filter them out.”

The researchers were careful to note that SpaceX has been following all international regulations, and that these signals are not a violation of any law or regulation. Further, they emphasized that “Discussions we have had with SpaceX on the topic have been constructive.”

Because many other such constellations are now being launched — with several from China that normally does not negotiate these issues like SpaceX — the scientists want new international regulations imposed to protect their work.

More and more it seems astronomers should simply move their operations into space or the Moon, where such issues will not exist. Getting above the atmosphere and away from our modern technological society provides so many benefits for research the move should be a no-brainer. That it is now also much cheaper to do it (thanks to SpaceX) makes the move even more practical.

For some reason however the idea seems too difficult for many astronomers to fathom.

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Curiosity amid the boxwork

12:13 pm

Curiosity amid the boxwork, looking uphill
Click for original image.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The panorama above, cropped to post here, was taken on July 20, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks uphill to the south into the canyon that Curiosity will eventually travel, with the white chaotic upper flanks of Mount Sharp on the horizon. The mountain’s peak itself is out of view, about 25 miles away.

The overview map to the right provides the context. The blue dot marks Curiosity’s present position, on the northern edge of the large patch of very distinct boxwork ridges visible from orbit. You can see these ridges in the foreground of the panorama above.

The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line roughly indicates the rover’s future travels. At the moment, however, it is going nowhere, as the science team is focused on studying these boxwork ridges in the hope they can determine their origin. Such features are usually associated with cracking later filled with lava, with the polygon-shaped cracking usually associated with a formerly wet environment drying.

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First Hubble images of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas released

5:03 pm

Comet 3I/Atlas, taken by Hubble
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An undergraduate student has just released the first pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the interstellar object 3I/Atlas, confirming that it is a comet as indicated by the earlier image taken by the Gemini North telescope.

One of those images, taken only hours ago, is the inset on the map showing the comet’s route through the solar system to the right. The streaks on the image are either stars or cosmic rays. Though this image is of significantly lower quality than the Gemini North picture, it once again shows both the comet’s nucleus and developing coma.

A preprint [pdf] of a new research paper based on data from both telescopes further confirms this conclusion:

[T]hese results suggest that 3I/ATLAS hosts a coma containing large water ice grains, and that its dust continuum is stable over at least week-long timescales. The spectral characteristics further distinguish 3I from known ultrared trans-Neptunian objects and align it more closely with active Jupiter-family comets.

The last conclusion is very significant. Though the path and speed of this interstellar object says it must come from beyond the solar system, its cometary make-up more resembles comets that reside in the inner solar system. These facts strongly imply that there is at least one other solar systems not very different from our own.

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Astronomers detect exoplanet shaping the protoplanetary disk surrounding a baby star

9:41 am

Star with disk
Click for original image.

Astronomers using two different instruments on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have now directly detected what they think is an exoplanet as it shapes the spiral arms of a baby star’s protoplanetary disk.

In the case of HD 135344B’s disc, swirling spiral arms had previously been detected by another team of astronomers using SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch), an instrument on ESO’s VLT. However, none of the previous observations of this system found proof of a planet forming within the disc.

Now, with observations from the new VLT’s Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, the researchers say they may have found their prime suspect. The team spotted the planet candidate right at the base of one of the disc’s spiral arms, exactly where theory had predicted they might find the planet responsible for carving such a pattern.

The newly detected object however might be a brown dwarf and not an exoplanet. More observations are required to reduce the uncertainty.

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Have astronomers observed a black hole twice gobble from the same star?

9:23 am

Astronomers have now observed identical flares 700 days apart and coming from the same supermassive black hole, suggesting that a star was partially disrupted both times as it orbited the black hole.

Both flares produced less energy than predicted, based on calculations that assumed the complete destruction of a star. From the paper’s [pdf] abstract:

Here we present the optical-ultraviolet tidal disruption event AT 2022dbl, which showed a nearly identical repetition 700 days after the first flare. Ruling out gravitational lensing and two chance unrelated disruptions, we conclude that at least the first flare represents the partial disruption of a star.

…Since both flares are typical of the optical-ultraviolet class of tidal disruptions in terms of their radiated energy, temperature, luminosity, and spectral features, it follows that either the entire class are partial rather than full stellar disruptions, contrary to the prevalent assumption, or some members of the class are partial disruptions, having nearly the same observational characteristics as full disruptions. Whichever option is true, these findings could require revised models for the emission mechanisms of optical-ultraviolet tidal disruption flares and a reassessment of their expected rates.

Assuming the star wasn’t completely destroyed during the second flare, a third flare should occur about two years from now, as the star swings around and makes its next close approach. If so it will confirm this theory. If not, we will be left with the simple uncertainty of science.

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A galaxy surrounded by galaxies

11:12 am

A galaxy surrounded by galaxies
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a survey of galaxies where Type 1a supernovae have occurred, in order to better refine the precise brightness of these explosions.

What makes this galaxy most interesting are the hundreds of other galaxies that appear to surround it. And that ain’t an illusion.

NGC 3285B is a member of the Hydra I cluster, one of the largest galaxy clusters in the nearby Universe. Galaxy clusters are collections of hundreds to thousands of galaxies that are bound to one another by gravity. The Hydra I cluster is anchored by two giant elliptical galaxies at its centre. Each of these galaxies is about 150,000 light-years across, making them about 50% larger than our home galaxy, the Milky Way. NGC 3285B sits on the outskirts of its home cluster, far from the massive galaxies at the centre.

As for the survey program, Type 1a supernovae are the measure cosmologists have used to discover the unexpected acceleration of the universe’s expansion rate at the largest scales, something they dub “dark energy” because they really don’t understand what they have discovered. That discovery however hinges entirely on the assumed intrinsic brightness of Type 1a supernovae. Astronomers have assumed these supernovae all have the same approximate brightness, and extrapolate their distance by that brightness.

The problem are the assumptions. We really don’t know if all Type 1a supernovae are approximately the same brightness. And even if they are equally bright, we also do not have a firm grasp of what that brightness should be.

This survey is an attempt to narrow or eliminate these uncertainties.

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Update on eye research at ISS

10:03 am

Link here. The NASA update provides a nice overview of the research, beginning with this overview:

When astronauts began spending six months and more aboard the International Space Station, they started to notice changes in their vision. For example, many found that, as their mission progressed, they needed stronger reading glasses. Researchers studying this phenomenon identified swelling in the optic disc, which is where the optic nerve enters the retina, and flattening of the eye shape. These symptoms became known as Space-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS).

The research suspects the changes are due to the fluid shifts in the body that take place due to weightlessness, with blood shifting from the legs to the head. Various projects have studied a number of solutions, including wearing leg cuffs, administering vitamin B, and possibly using centrifuge-created artificial gravity to mitigate the condition. The problem has also generated new work in developing better equipment for to studying the eye, including improved imaging and techniques for measuring the eye’s stiffness.

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Astronomers detect first evidence of gas condensing to molecular solids in baby solar system

11:39 am

Baby star with jets of new material
Click for original image.

Using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have detected the first evidence of the gas and dust surrounding a young star condensing to molecular solids, thus beginning the initial stages of planet formation.

This newborn planetary system is emerging around HOPS-315, a ‘proto’ or baby star that sits some 1300 light-years away from us and is an analogue of the nascent Sun. Around such baby stars, astronomers often see discs of gas and dust known as ‘protoplanetary discs’, which are the birthplaces of new planets. … Their results show that SiO [silicon monoxide] is present around the baby star in its gaseous state, as well as within these crystalline minerals, suggesting it is only just beginning to solidify. “This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our Solar System,” says co-author Edwin Bergin, a professor at the University of Michigan, USA.

…With these data, the team determined that the chemical signals were coming from a small region of the disc around the star equivalent to the orbit of the asteroid belt around the Sun.

The false-color picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. It shows jets blowing out from the central baby star. Orange indicates carbon monoxide, while blue is the silicon monoxide. Initially the astronomers detected these molecules using spectroscopy from the Webb Space Telescope. This ALMA image was then used to identify where these molecules were located in the system.

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