The Tortoise and the Star
Spectrographs here on Earth are getting good enough to detect tortoise-speed velocity shifts in starlight. That means that we need to understand the bubbling, broiling surfaces of stars to tortoise-level precision.
Corralling the Solar Corona
The 2017 total solar eclipse both enraptured the general American public and provided a rare opportunity to study the solar corona in detail. Today’s paper describes an attempt to predict the behavior of the solar atmosphere in advance of the eclipse, a space weather analog to terrestrial weather forecasting!
What happened to the Milky Way’s sister galaxy?
Cosmic cannibalism, or the merging of small galaxies with larger ones, happens all over the universe. We now know that the Milky Way lost a sister galaxy to Andromeda, and we’re now a step closer to understanding what might ultimately happen when Andromeda comes for us.
Stealing from the Solar System: the Effects of a Stellar Fly-By
Steep density drop-offs and orbits with high inclinations and eccentricities are just a few of the mysterious features in the outer reaches of our Solar System – can a single stellar fly-by help explain all of them?
Satellite Galaxies All in a Row—How So?
Many satellite galaxies in the local universe are orbiting their parent galaxies in highly coherent planes—yet such structures are vanishingly rare in simulations. What gives?
Reionizing the universe, with a quasar assist
What role did quasars play in reionizing the early universe?