INFORMATION

When we think of Mars as the “Red Planet”, the image that comes to mind is just that - a lot of red. That comes from the oxidization of the dust and rocks that cover the planet's surface, but there are some instances where the Red Planet still has a few visual tricks up its sleeve. One such trick was recently captured by the European Space Agency’s venerable Mars Express orbiter, which captured what seems to be a set of metallic waves inside a giant impact basin. But on closer inspection, it becomes clear they aren’t liquid metal or some sort of alien architecture, but a manifestation of Mars’ complex environment. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/d8KL2lS via IFTTT

The worlds of the Solar System offer up exciting and (so far) mostly pristine places for planetary scientists to study. As space missions continue to travel to Mars, Europa, asteroids, and other worlds, questions keep coming up about keeping them safe for continued exploration and observations. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LmU3etN via IFTTT

Combining over 20 years of archival data from Hubble with new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has found the first of the "missing" black holes. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/t8MZYK2 via IFTTT

The collapsing stars Eddington swore couldn't exist turned out to be everywhere, and half a century later the world handed Chandrasekhar his Nobel. How the 1.4 solar mass limit became one of the most important numbers in modern astronomy. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/AXP85kd via IFTTT

Astronomers aren't certain where Fast Radio Bursts come from. But they still have utility. They can use them to find the Universe's "missing matter." from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LwSKymg via IFTTT

Martian dust storms are some of the most fascinating and mysterious planetary surface processes ever observed, as Earth, Mars, and Saturn’s moon Titan are the only known planetary bodies to have active dust storms. However, the major difference for Mars is its dust storms can blanket the entire planet at once, resulting in the surface becoming completely unobservable and blocking out sunlight, with the scientific community concerned this might hinder robotic, and even human, space exploration. But what if covering the surface and blocking sunlight wasn’t the only issue Martian global dust storms pose for future missions? from Universe Today https://ift.tt/WkZIwsA via IFTTT