Carolyn Collins Petersen
Science Fiction was an Inspiration for Many Professional Astronomers
What do MINBAR, TARDIS, Cardassian Expansion, BoRG, DS9, Tatooines, and ACBAR all have in common? They're names of astronomical surveys…
Carbon Monoxide is Plentiful in Nebulae, but Then Disappears When Planets Form. Now we Know Where it Goes!
Protoplanetary disks—those nurseries around young stars where planets form—are filled with gas and dust. In particular, many show a lot…
New Horizons Could Still Have More Adventures Ahead
Remember New Horizons? That plucky little spacecraft that gave us our first up-close looks at Pluto and Arrokoth? Of course,…
Samples From Asteroid Ryugu Contain Bits That Came From Outside the Solar System
Long before our Sun began to form, stars were dying in our part of the galaxy. One of them exploded…
Would We Have Continents Without Asteroid Impacts?
Early Earth was a wild and wooly place. In its first billion years, during a period called the Archean, our…
Satellites are Tracking Rivers of Garbage Flowing Across the Oceans
There's an ocean of human-made garbage floating through Earth's seas. From plastic straws to beverage bottles and food wrappers, the…
In Wildly Different Environments, Stars End Up Roughly the Same
When you look at a region of the sky where stars are born, you see a cloud of gas and…
Here’s a Sneak Preview of What It’ll Look Like When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Collide
When big spiral galaxies collide, they don't end up as one really big spiral. Instead, they create a humongous elliptical…
It’s Been 10 Years Since Curiosity Landed on Mars, and the Rover is Still Going Strong
For a spacecraft that's traveled millions of kilometers across space and driven on the surface of Mars, Curiosity is holding…
Astronomers List 88 Distant Galaxies They Want to Look at With JWST. Some Are Less Than 200 Million Years Old.
Way back in the earliest ages of the universe, the first galaxies were born. Astronomers want to know more about…