BepiColombo Makes Up-Close Measurement of Mercury's Solar Bombardment

BepiColombo's measurements of particle bombardment at Mercury will help assess the impact of space storms on Mercury's surface and on Earth's atmosphere.

The Red Planet Has a Purple Side

Mars appears red because of iron oxides in the regolith. But it's not uniformly red. Different lighting conditions and different materials accumulated on the surface can make it appear purple, as in these images from Mars Express and its High-Resolution Stereo Camera.

To Understand The Solar Cycle, Notice How The Sun Sleeps

Astronomer Sandra Chapman has found a connection between the quiet period of one solar cycle and the active period of the next. Her data shows how a critical cutoff point is the key, but the real test will be the solar maximum of Cycle 26 in the 2030s.

Astronomy’s Decades-Long Quest To Understand Cosmic Topology

Cosmic topology is as esoteric as cosmology can get. But a growing number of astrophysicists think it holds keys to understanding the universe on its largest scales.

Researchers Develop a Way to Check the Weather on a Exoplanet

Scientists from Trinity have developed a powerful way to unravel the changing weather patterns on distant worlds. Using this approach, they discovered that the weather on a well-studied brown dwarf, “SIMP 0136”, previously linked with Northern Lights-like phenomena, is largely shaped by just two dominant processes: changes in temperature and the vertical structure of its clouds.

A Zombie White Dwarf Star is Born Again. Hallelujah!

30 years ago, an amateur astronomer noticed a white dwarf star suddenly getting brighter. New research shows this is due to a Very Late Thermal Pulse, a type of helium flash. The star has heated up and become brighter, and is now called a 'born again' star. It's evolved into a Wolf-Rayet type star, and astronomers will get to watch as it continues to evolve on human timescales.

The Sun May Have Swallowed a Planet

New research suggests that some unusual characteristics of the Sun may be explained if it swallowed a large planet sometime during the Solar System’s formation.