Scientists find evidence Mercury has a solid inner core
Scientists have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Like Earth, Mercury’s outer core is composed of liquid metal, but there have only
Category : Space & Planetary
HeritageDaily – Space & planetary news and astronomy press releases from Nasa & across the globe
Five planets revealed after 20 years of observation
Over 4000 exoplanets have been discovered since the first one in 1995, but the vast majority of them orbit their stars with relatively short periods
Explosion on Jupiter-sized star ten times more powerful than ever seen on our Sun
A stellar flare ten times more powerful than anything seen on our sun has burst from an ultracool star almost the same size as Jupiter.
Heavy metal planet fragment survives destruction from dead star
A fragment of a planet that has survived the death of its star has been discovered by University of Warwick astronomers in a disc of
Iron volcanoes may have erupted on metal asteroids
Metallic asteroids are thought to have started out as blobs of molten iron floating in space.
Astronomers capture first image of a black hole
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) operates a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes that are linked together.
Hubble helps uncover origin of Neptune’s smallest moon Hippocamp ESA/HUBBLE INFORMATION CENTRE
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, along with older data from the Voyager 2 probe, have revealed more about the origin of Neptune's smallest
Merging neutron stars
The option to measure the gravitational waves of two merging neutron stars has offered the chance to answer some of the fundamental questions about the
Missing-Link in Planet Evolution Found
For the first time ever, astronomers have detected a 1.3 km radius body at the edge of the Solar System. Kilometer sized bodies like the
Stellar winds, the source material for the universe, are clumpy
Data recorded by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of a neutron star as it passed through a dense patch of stellar wind emanating from its massive
Planetary collision that formed the moon made life possible on Earth
Most of Earth's essential elements for life -- including most of the carbon and nitrogen in you -- probably came from another planet.
Making the Hubble’s deepest images even deeper
To produce the deepest image of the Universe from space a group of researchers from the Instituto de AstrofÃsica de Canarias (IAC) led by Alejandro
Astronomers find star material could be building block of life
An organic molecule detected in the material from which a star forms could shed light on how life emerged on Earth, according to new research
Saturn hasn’t always had rings
One of the last acts of NASA's Cassini spacecraft before its death plunge into Saturn's hydrogen and helium atmosphere was to coast between the planet
Double star system flips planet-forming disk into pole position
New research led by an astronomer at the University of Warwick has found the first confirmed example of a double star system that has flipped
Our Universe: An expanding bubble in an extra dimension
Uppsala University researchers have devised a new model for the Universe – one that may solve the enigma of dark energy.
Sapphires and rubies in the sky
21 light years away from us in the constellation Cassiopeia, a planet orbits its star with a year that is just three days long. Its
Discovered: The most-distant solar system object ever observed
A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System.
NASA research reveals Saturn is losing its rings at ‘worst-case-scenario’ rate
New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago.
Did supernovae kill off large ocean animals at dawn of Pleistocene?
About 2.6 million years ago, an oddly bright light arrived in the prehistoric sky and lingered there for weeks or months. It was a supernova
Mars moon got its grooves from rolling stones, study suggests
A new study bolsters the idea that strange grooves crisscrossing the surface of the Martian moon Phobos were made by rolling boulders blasted free from
Ancient Egyptians discovered Algol’s variability 3,000 years before western astronomers
Astronomers and Egyptologists demonstrate how ancient Egyptian calendars were used to describe the behaviour of astronomical observations, in particular, the star system Algol.