David Jewitt et al 2021 AJ 161 188
Models of the photometry of the incoming long-period comet C/2017 K2 show that dust production beginning at distances of ~35 au from the Sun — Kuiper-belt distances — is needed to match observations.
W. M. Farrell et al 2021 Planet. Sci. J. 2 46
At takeoff and landing, dust kicked up by the Mars helicopter Ingenuity could cause the copter’s blades to become electrically charged, leading to local atmospheric electrical breakdown near the helicopter.
E. Plachy et al 2021 ApJS 253 11
Analysis of 25 Cepheid stars observed by the TESS space mission in Sectors 1–5 demonstrate the potential and the limitations of TESS in observing various subtypes of Cepheid variables.
Katherine M. Xiang et al 2021 ApJ 909 125
Five new candidates have been identified for barred spiral galaxies whose bars are currently buckling. These candidates, found using a kinematic signature, more than double the number of candidate buckling bars.
Edwin S. Kite and Laura Schaefer 2021 ApJL 909 L22
A new model predicts that most rocky planets that have orbital periods of 10–100 days and that have radii within 0.1–0.2 Earth radii of the lower edge of the radius valley can still retain water-dominated atmospheres.
Matteo Messa et al 2021 ApJ 909 121
Observations of a sample of 100 extincted star clusters suggest that typical timescales for clearing the natal gas cloud are in between 3 and 5 Myr, roughly 1 Myr older than found in previous studies.