From its visible surface, the sun radiates heat at a relatively cool temperature of 5,800 Kelvin. Yet within the thin outer layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the corona, electrons can reach temperatures of millions of ...
A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand.
Planetary Sciences
Oct 26, 2026
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324
The Lazuli Space Telescope will be the first private space telescope. It's the brainchild of Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO. It will have a 3-meter mirror (9.8 feet), larger than Hubble's 2.4-meter mirror (7.9 feet), and ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 26, 2026
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83
Many topics in astronomy and astrophysics are esoteric. There's not much of a relationship between something like the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and the life of a regular person going about their ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2026
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Do cosmic radiation doses near the moon differ significantly from those received by astronauts in low Earth orbit? Experimental lithium fluoride detectors, installed aboard the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis I mission, ...
Space Exploration
Oct 23, 2026
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76
In the deepest region of the Earth's mantle, just above the core, much of the material consists of crystals of magnesium oxide. In larger rocky exoplanets called super-Earths, the higher pressures in the lower mantle may ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 23, 2026
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81
The Orion Nebula is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye. Some of the young stars in the nebula are surrounded by disks of gas and dust in which planets form. Radiation from the massive central star, 1 Ori ...
Astronomy
Oct 23, 2026
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30
With a successful Mars gravity assist in its rearview mirror, NASA's Psyche spacecraft has fired up its thrusters and is accelerating toward the metal-rich asteroid of the same name. During the first leg of its journey, following ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 23, 2026
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119
A new study suggests that some of the heaviest rocky planets ever reported may not be as heavy as they look. These so-called 'mega-Earths,' rocky planets weighing more than about 10 Earths, could be an illusion created by ...
An international team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, led by a postdoctoral research fellow from the University of Newcastle, Australia, has discovered that solar jets ...
Astronomy
Oct 22, 2026
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