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The extraction of the wind pattern, vorticity and divergence down to a scale of 200 km from the cluster of cyclones at Jupiter’s north pole shows evidence of an anticyclonic ring, which is needed to keep the system stable, around the central cyclone. No signatures of convection are observed at 200 km scales.
Benchmark testing of many opacity models of exoplanetary transmission spectra, simulating representative spectra to be obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope, highlights the presence of biases that would significantly reduce the accuracy on the retrieval of atmospheric parameters. Mitigation strategies are presented.
A bright patch in the Fermi bubbles, previously attributed to a jet launched by the Galaxy’s central black hole, is actually due to gamma-ray emission by millisecond pulsars in a background, satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.
A close look at microcraters on a lunar grain from a Chang’e-5 returned sample shows evidence of the formation of nanophase metallic iron (np-Fe0) via disproportionation of Fe2+ triggered by secondary impacts, with no space weathering contribution from the solar wind.
About 0.5% by volume of the Ryugu particle C0009 is made up of anhydrous silicates, mostly olivines, despite the extensive aqueous alteration of its parent body. Such aggregates, rich in 16O, were present in Ryugu’s protolith and survived fluid activity.
A new selection method is used to obtain a sample of dual/lensed active galactic nuclei (AGN) candidates with sub-arcsec separations from Gaia data. This substantially increases the known number of dual AGNs, with implications for studies of in-spiralling supermassive black holes.
The Galactic Centre should host up to 10% of the newest stars in the Galaxy, but the only two known young star clusters in the Galactic Centre account for less than 10% of this expected mass. A high-angular-resolution near-infrared survey of the Sgr B1 region finds another 25% of the expected mass of very young stars.
The sample taken from carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu and brought back to Earth by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft contains outer Solar System-derived materials uncontaminated by terrestrial processes. Even CI carbonaceous chondrites, despite their closeness to solar abundances, are not pristine.
The direct observation of the velocity field of a disk wind around a forming massive star has been achieved with high-spatial-resolution (0.05 au) observations of water masers.
Some fragments of the Aguas Zarcas carbonaceous meteorite have been shocked before being redeposited over an unshocked lithology. As their size distribution is similar to that of the ejecta observed at Bennu, they might be the signature of activity of the Aguas Zarcas parent body. Alternatively, they might be the result of a large-scale impact.
Modelling of the gas excitation along the path of black hole jets suggests a more complex picture than previously expected, with the jet passage effecting pressure changes that could enhance or suppress star formation.
The Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH) aims to detect the sky-averaged 21-cm neutral hydrogen line from the early Universe by jointly analysing the cosmological signal, foreground emission and systematic effects.
An inactive black hole has been found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, bound into a binary star system. Having experienced a negligible ‘kick’ during formation, the existence of this black hole has strong implications for black hole-–black hole mergers.
A metallicity survey of Fermi bubble clouds reveals a wide range of metallicities, challenging the theory that all of these clouds launch from the Milky Way’s disk and instead suggesting that they originate in both the disk and halo.
A full 3D high-resolution magnetohydrodynamic model of solar filaments and prominences highlights the crucial role of the magnetic Rayleigh–Taylor instability in their formation and evolution, as well as explaining their different appearance and contrasting brightness when projected on the solar disk or at the limb.
Modelling shows that electrostatic lofting removes the finer particles from the asteroid regolith layer efficiently for kilometre-sized or smaller bodies, creating the boulder-dominated surfaces seen on Bennu or Ryugu. On larger bodies, the formation of fine regolith via weathering effects dominates instead.
N-body simulations show that the Earth might have accreted stochastically from various precursor bodies with different compositions depending on their formation temperature. This scenario fits the elemental isotope composition of the bulk Earth and suggests the presence of a radial gradient in the composition of the protoplanetary disk.
Recent detections of nitrogen-bearing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (N-PAHs) in the interstellar medium prompt questions about how these molecules form at low temperatures. Here a combination of kinetic studies and spectroscopy reveals an efficient formation route from monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons to N-PAHs.
A hypermodel approach is used to analyse gravitational-wave signals under multiple models simultaneously, enabling the data-driven study of systematic modelling errors. The authors verify the approach on existing observations of the two observed binary neutron star merger signals GW170817 and GW190425 and a third candidate event.
Harnessing the resolving power of space very long baseline interferometry results in a link between 22 GHz H2O MegaMaser emission and accretion activity in the thin disc around the nucleus of galaxy NGC 4258. The emission regions appear consistent with a periodic magneto-rotational instability in the disc.
