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Conflicting methodologies for estimating the CO2 intensity of the space sector are beginning to emerge because of a lack of publicly available data, resulting in extensive variations that undermine the credibility of reported results.
The impact of astronomy on the Earth’s climate is being increasingly discussed, not least in Chile, home to many astronomical observatories, during the seventeenth annual meeting of the Chilean Astronomical Society (SOCHIAS) in January 2022.
This Review looks at how the most recent results on intracluster light—the faint glow between galaxies within a galaxy cluster—fit into the current understanding of the field and provides a global perspective on the direction of future studies.
Six out of the eight planets of the Solar System have moons, which are inextricably linked to the planets’ formation. Finding moons of exoplanets is a new way to explore their origins.
Gravitational-wave science is rapidly growing in maturity as a research area; in May 2021 the next generation of gravitational-wave scientists gathered together to create a vision of the future of the field.
Oxygen is the building block of key species in planetary atmospheres and a potential life indicator. Ground-based spectroscopy is now used to detect oxygen on an ultra-hot Jupiter and to prove departure from thermochemical equilibrium.
The latest iteration of the Science at Low Frequencies conference took place online over 6–9 December 2021. More than 400 attendees registered to hear about topics ranging from the Earth’s ionosphere to the Epoch of Reionization.
Any detection of potential biosignature molecules like oxygen and methane needs to be put into the planetary environmental context to understand its actual importance. Such a contextual approach is also essential when considering alternative or agnostic biosignatures on planets and exoplanets.
Supra-arcade downflows (SADs) are dark, turbulent flows that appear in the Sun’s corona during a solar flare, which have defied explanation for over two decades. A three-dimensional simulation can finally explain the origins of these plasma downflows.
Our understanding of the relatively newly recognized phenomenon of haloes of gamma-ray emission around Galactic pulsars is summarized, from observational and theoretical perspectives, together with their implication for the acceleration of cosmic rays.
This Review examines gas dynamics in dwarf galaxies, such as rotation curves and mass models. Star-forming dwarfs extend the dynamical laws of spiral galaxies and show small scatter around them, implying a tight coupling between baryons and dark matter.
This Perspective discusses massive black holes in dwarf galaxies and presents new insights on the demographics of nearby dwarf galaxies to help constrain the black hole occupation/active fraction as a function of mass and dwarf galaxy type.
This Review summarizes what is known of the stellar and chemical properties of nearby (<20 Mpc) star-forming dwarf galaxies. These objects resemble the earliest formed galaxies and may thus represent a window on the distant, early Universe.
Samples returned from the carbonaceous (C-type) asteroid 162173 Ryugu by the Hayabusa2 mission were preliminarily analysed in a non-destructive manner. Their dark spectral features, small densities and absence of a high-temperature component imply that they are most similar to primitive CI group chondrites, but show some differences to known planetary materials.
