News by Subject Space & Planetary

Using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner, astronomers have unambiguously detected the presence of a disc around a planet outside our Solar System for the first time. The observations will shed new light on how moons and planets form in young stellar systems.

Using recordings of marsquakes, seismologists have gained a precise picture of the structure and thickness of the red planet's crust / findings from NASA's InSight mission published in 'Science'

A new approach to analysing the development of magnetic tangles on the Sun has led to a breakthrough in a longstanding debate about how solar energy is injected into the solar atmosphere before being released into space, causing space weather events. The first direct evidence that field lines become knotted before they emerge at the visible surface of the Sun has implications for our ability to predict the behaviour of active regions and the nature of the solar interior.

According to the latest cosmological models, large spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way grew by absorbing smaller galaxies, by a sort of galactic cannibalism. Evidence for this is given by very large structures, the tidal stellar streams, which are observed around them, which are the remains of these satellite galaxies. But the full histories of the majority of these cases are hard to study, because these flows of stars are very faint, and only the remains of the most recent mergers have been detected.

Not a moonshot: Karan Jani explores possibility of lunar observatory to better understand fundamental physics, astronomy and cosmology

Little is known about the weather at night on Venus as the absence of sunlight makes imaging difficult. Now, researchers have devised a way to use infrared sensors on board the Venus orbiter Akatsuki to reveal the first details of the nighttime weather of our nearest neighbor. Their analytical methods could be used to study other planets including Mars and gas giants as well.

Scientists show for the first time that 'stealth' coronal mass ejections, a type of solar storm, can be detected early on the Sun's surface. This could help put measures in place that limit damage to technology and energy grids on Earth from the electromagnetic radiation. The new techniques can be implemented immediately, and their power to forecast risky events will become even greater once the new Solar Orbiter and similar spacecraft become fully operational.