All Stories by Lisa Grossman
- Planets
The dwarf planet Quaoar hosts an impossible ring
Quaoar’s ring lies outside the Roche limit. That’s an imaginary line beyond which rings aren’t thought to be stable.
- Space
Jets may have sculpted rings of Cat’s Eye nebula
The Cat’s Eye nebula is one of the most complex of its kind. A 3-D model now reveals the source of that complexity.
- Space
NASA’s DART spacecraft successfully bumped an asteroid onto a new path
The spacecraft’s intentional crash into an asteroid changed the space rock’s orbit by more than 30 minutes — far more than expected.
- Space
A missing moon could have given Saturn its rings — and tilt
The hypothetical moon is being called Chrysalis. It could have helped tip the planet over before getting shredded to form Saturn’s rings.
- Space
Awesome! Here are the James Webb Space Telescope’s first pictures
The first image shows ancient galaxies. Some reveal light that has been traveling 13 billion years to reach us.
- Space
Wild art? No, it’s a radio image of the heart of our Milky Way
Eyelash-like radio filaments accent the brightest feature in this image — a supermassive black hole.
- Space
The long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope has a big to-do list
The James Webb Space Telescope has been in the works for so long that new fields of science have emerged for it to study.
- Space
Astronomers may have found first known planet in another galaxy
The spiral-shaped Whirlpool galaxy may be home to the first planet spotted outside our own Milky Way galaxy.
- Space
Explainer: Calculating a star’s age
Scientists can figure out a star's mass or composition pretty easily. Determining how old that star is, however, is a lot harder.
- Planets
NASA’s Perseverance rover grabbed its first Martian rocks
Two finger-sized pieces of stone drilled from a basalt rock are the first bits of Mars ready to be brought to Earth.
- Planets
Pluto is no longer a planet — or is it?
In the 15 years since Pluto lost its status as a planet, some scientists continue to use whatever definition works best for them.
- Space
Here’s an easier new way to weigh a black hole
The timing of flickers in the gas and dust of a black hole’s accretion disk correlates to its mass, a new study finds.
