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The sunspot number time series is an essential tool to determine the secular variations of solar activity, but particular care must be taken to handle and present incomplete temporal coverage. The authors present the current state of research and propose a new way to visualize long-term solar activity data.
Volcanic domes are common in our Solar System but so far only one has been identified on dwarf planet Ceres. New research suggests that numerous volcanic domes may have formed throughout Ceres’s history, indicating that cryovolcanism may have once been more common on the dwarf planet.
The stunning discovery image of the spiral dust plumes enshrouding a Wolf–Rayet binary system dubbed Apep provides new trails of evidence that may bring us closer to resolving outstanding questions on the evolution and death of massive stars.
A model of the optical light detected following the merger of two neutron stars reveals polarization to be a unique probe of the geometry of the kilonova explosion that accompanied the gravitational waves.
An ultrahigh-energy neutrino event detected with the IceCube detector in Antarctica, simultaneous and co-spatial with a multi-wavelength outburst of a blazar about 3 billion light years away, points unambiguously to lepto-hadronic cooling mechanisms in jetted active galactic nuclei.
Contrary to usual assumptions, new astronomical observations suggest that dark matter may be self-interacting. If true this would rule out most popular dark matter particle candidates, including supersymmetric neutralinos, axions and sterile neutrinos, as well as black holes.
The first fast radio burst (FRB) was discovered in 2007, and in the following decade ~25 more were detected. Now the field stands on the brink of an explosion of detections, largely driven by the availability of new radio facilities. One of the founders of the field, Duncan Lorimer, reviews the early years of FRB science.
The second decade of fast radio burst (FRB) astronomy has started at pace, with detections of tens of new FRBs from newly operational facilities such as ASKAP and CHIME. Evan Keane looks forward to the upcoming years and the discoveries they will bring.
Large cosmological datasets have been probing the properties of our Universe and constraining the parameters of dark matter and dark energy with increasing precision. Deep learning techniques have shown potential to be smarter than — and greatly outperform — human-designed statistics.
The study of the early stages of galaxy cluster formation and their evolutionary path is critical for testing our structure-formation models and cosmological paradigm. Recent observations have pushed the detection of ‘protoclusters’ further back in time.
Observations with a continent-wide array of radio telescopes show that the merger of two neutron stars, which produced gravitational waves, successfully launched a very fast and highly collimated jet.
Gender equity across the globe is improving thanks to dedicated efforts, policies, monitoring, training and assessment. However, progress is slow and more needs to be done. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, but quantitative surveys are helping to gauge the situation.
The positions and motions of galaxies are dictated by the laws of gravity. A new technique to measure the anisotropy in the three-dimensional redshift distribution of galaxies seriously challenges attempts to go beyond Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
The European Astronomical Society (EAS) awarded its most prestigious prizes during its annual meeting, the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS), held in Liverpool from 3 April to 6 April 2018.
The Andromeda galaxy’s stellar halo and disk show signs of an active recent merger history. Recent work suggests that most of the disturbances in Andromeda’s disk and the inner halo may be due to a single merger event.
