Webb just clocked nearly 9,000 young star clusters and found the biggest ones break from their birth clouds in 5 million years, a timing clue that could reshape how astronomers model galaxies growing up

Science and Health

The James Webb Space Telescope has given astronomers a sharper look at how young star clusters escape their birthplaces, and the result cuts against the simple intuition that smaller clusters should clear out faster. In a Nature Astronomy study, researchers used Hubble and Webb observations of thousands of young star clusters in four nearby galaxies […]

Titan’s atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s, its rivers and lakes are made of methane and ethane, and NASA is sending a nuclear-powered drone there because on Saturn’s largest moon, flying may be easier than driving.

Science and Health

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, has a denser atmosphere than Earth and a surface where rain, rivers, and seas are made of liquid hydrocarbons rather than water. And NASA is building a rotorcraft to explore it, because Titan’s physical conditions genuinely favour flight in a way no other body in the solar system does. […]

Enceladus is a tiny moon of Saturn that sprays water vapor and ice grains into space from an ocean hidden beneath its icy crust — meaning a spacecraft can sample material from an alien sea without ever landing.

Science and Health

This is accurate, and a spacecraft has already done it. Enceladus, a moon of Saturn only about 500 kilometres across, has a global ocean of liquid water under a shell of ice. Through fractures near its south pole, that ocean vents continuously into space as a plume of water vapour and fine ice grains. Between […]