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Although ongoing volcanic activity on Venus has been hypothesized, directly detecting active lava flows is challenging. Now, an analysis of Magellan radar images of Venus acquired at different times provides indications of ongoing volcanic activity in two distinct areas. This evidence also suggests a planet more volcanically active than previously thought.
Observation of new lava flows between different Magellan radar scans in regions of Sif Mons and Niobe Planitia confirms that volcanism on Venus is still ongoing. This evidence also suggests the planet’s volcanic activity exceeds previous estimates.
The Sanya incoherent scatter radar (SYISR) system has now been augmented to become the world’s first phased-array tristatic ISR system, enabling it to sense volumes of the Earth’s ionosphere, explain the SYISR-TS leadership team.
The near-infrared spectrometer onboard JWST has detected CO2 and CO ices on 56 and 29 trans-Neptunian objects, respectively, indicating two dominant compositional types among them. These compositional differences suggest varied formation regions in the protoplanetary disk.
Utilizing a synergistic dataset from three Mars orbiters, it is shown that water photolysis above the main region of cloud formation in the Martian atmosphere is the dominant source of hydrogen available for atmospheric escape on Mars.
Simulations show that the competing effects of the solar wind and planetary rotation can explain the structure of planetary aurorae: the former dominates for Earth-type and the latter for Jupiter-type aurorae, with the highly variable aurorae at Saturn representing a transition state.
A survey of astronomy and geophysics professionals has revealed prevalent bullying and harassment within the sector, with women and marginalized groups most likely to suffer. It is time for the community to face up to the issue and discuss ways of tackling it.
The SPECULOOS project detected an Earth-sized planet in a short orbit around a nearby Jupiter-sized star. This planet, SPECULOOS-3 b, is one of the most promising rocky exoplanets for detailed emission spectroscopy characterization with JWST.
Precise mass and radius measurements of giant planet WASP-193 b find an extremely low density of 0.059 ± 0.014 g cm−3. Current evolutionary models cannot fully explain such a low density, but the extended atmosphere makes WASP-193 b very suitable for high-precision characterization via JWST.
A pathway towards the formation of pyridine and (iso)quinoline, precursors to DNA and RNA, is revealed for conditions appropriate to Saturn’s moon Titan and the Taurus molecular cloud, providing insight into the synthesis of prebiotic molecules in space.
V1298 Tau b is a 20–30-Myr-old Jovian-sized planet with a haze-free, metal-poor atmosphere and a potentially hot interior. These properties suggest that V1298 Tau b formed in situ via pebble accretion and that it is still evolving and likely to become a Neptune- or sub-Neptune-sized planet.
An updated Jeans parameter that includes tidal forces can distinguish the various driving forces, both exogenous and endogenous, of atmospheric escape from low-mass close-in exoplanets. Depending on its value, escape can be dominated by tidal forces, extreme ultraviolet stellar radiation or a combination of the two.
Decametre radio observations are challenging due to the presence of the ionosphere. Here Groeneveld et al. present a strategy to correct for the ionosphere that allows them to make sharp decametre radio images from the ground with the LOFAR telescope.