It seems that Tabby’s star has more tricks up in its sleeve than previously thought: today’s pre-print shows evidence that the WTF star has actually dimmed during the 4-year long Kepler mission, throwing more fuel into the fire. But do not expect aliens. Just saying.
More than a year ago, scientists managed to land on a comet for the very first time in human history. Read on to get a compact overview of some of the most important results of the mission obtained so far.
The years of 2014 and 2015 may well be known as the time when our exploration of the solar system truly took off, as we explored asteroids, comets, and minor planets. Here’s a look back at what we’ve accomplished in the last year, and what we’re about to achieve in the year to come.
Simulations show that the Oort cloud contains eight billion asteroids (in addition to hundreds of billions of comets). Do these asteroids pose a threat to Earth?
Comet ISON will be flying by on its way from the Oort Cloud to the Sun and back for the next couple months. Will the meteoroids it leaves behind produce any meteor showers here on Earth? The authors of this paper use orbital mechanics to find out.
This paper describes the measurement of the deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio in a Jupiter-family comet, 45P. This ratio is related to the formation history of the comet and helps inform our understanding of the formation of our solar system.