VLT Image Captures a "Cosmic Hawk" Spanning its Wings.

Today’s Picture of the Week, taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), seems to have captured a cosmic hawk as it spans its wings.

The 4.6-Billion-Year-Old Tape Recorder Hidden Inside Asteroid Dust

Asteroids are critical to unlock our understanding of the early solar system. These chunks of rock and dust were around at the very beginning, and they haven’t been as modified by planetary formation processes as, say, Earth has been. So scientists were really excited to get ahold of samples from Ryugu when they were returned by Hayabusa-2 a few years ago. However, when they started analyzing the magnetic properties of those samples, different research groups came up with different answers. Theorizing those conflicting results came from small sample sizes, a new paper recently published in JGR Planets from Masahiko Sato and their colleagues at the University of Tokyo used many more samples to finally dig into the magnetic history of these first ever returned asteroid samples.

Mars Express Images Reveal Mars' Pockmarked Surface

Craters, craters, and yet more craters: this snapshot from ESA’s Mars Express is packed full of them, each as fascinating as the last.

Astronomers Using MeerKAT Spot a Cosmic Laser Halfway Across the Universe

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a new radio astronomy frontier.

Phew! NASA Rules Out Asteroid Smashup on the Moon in 2032

Here’s one less thing to worry about — or to look forward to: NASA has ruled out any chance that an asteroid called 2024 YR4 will hit the moon in 2032.

Illinois and UChicago Physicists Develop a New Method for Measuring Cosmic Expansion

A team of astrophysicists, cosmologists, and physicists has developed a novel way to compute the Hubble constant using gravitational waves. As our capability to observe gravitational waves improves in the future, this new method could be used to make even more accurate measurements of the Hubble constant, bringing scientists closer to resolving the Hubble tension.

What Goes On Inside A Massive Star Before It Explodes As A Supernova?

When people think of supernova explosions, they're most-often thinking of Type II core-collapse supernovae, where a massive star becomes a red supergiant before collapsing on itself and exploding. New research uncovers what's going on inside the star before it explodes, and explains why SNe light curves can be different from one another.