Sodium gas appears to be denser above dark lunar maria and less dense above brighter lunar soils, but this could be because the faint sodium emission is drowned out by scattered light above bright regions.
Researchers present a new one-dimensional model of luminous red nova light curves, and the model has far-reaching applications to the mergers of stars and planets as well as stars and compact objects.
Numerical simulations help researchers understand the processes that regulate the mixing of metals newly introduced to the interstellar medium by supernovae — an important factor in star formation.
A hot Saturn exoplanet located 804 light-years away has a water-dominated optical transmission spectrum and — researchers suspect — a richly featured near-infrared spectrum perfect for JWST.
Using data from the Gaia spacecraft, researchers reassess the importance of extended stellar filaments in the Milky Way, finding that all of these purported structures are gravitationally unbound.
Spectroscopic follow-up of low-metallicity star candidates yields a wealth of metal-poor stars; roughly 92% of the stars in the sample have iron abundances more than an order of magnitude lower than the Sun.