3+ day, 9+ hour ago   (924+ words) Hubble has found a growing ten-sided atmospheric wave around Saturn’s south pole—the first large regular-sided jet seen there. Saturn has long been known for a strange shape in its clouds. A vast hexagon circles the planet’s north pole, holding…...

3+ day, 9+ hour ago   (572+ words) Epigraphy—the study of inscriptions—connects the writing with the object and the place where it was found. A useful way to understand the process is to follow three different clues: the marks themselves, the language, and the evidence for…...

4+ day, 15+ hour ago   (495+ words) giving astronomers a new counterpart to the planet’s famous northern hexagon. The southern pattern appears to be evolving, raising a question that a single striking image cannot answer: will it become another enduring feature of the planet’s weather? A study…...

1+ week, 3+ day ago   (600+ words) A joint Egyptian-Chinese archaeological mission has uncovered a mud-brick housing complex and a stone installation that may have been used as a wine press beside the Temple of Sekhmet at Mit Rahina, the site of ancient Memphis. The finds move…...

2+ week, 6+ hour ago   (783+ words) A collection of 50 battered parchment fragments has been joined into a page of Roman law that had been broken apart for centuries. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati matched seven of the largest pieces from the Penn Museum and reconstructed…...

2+ week, 2+ day ago   (743+ words) Comets are usually introduced through their tails, but a recent Subaru Telescope observation captured one without the cloud that gives a comet its familiar appearance. Comet 28P/Neujmin was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun—farther out than Saturn—when…...

2+ week, 4+ day ago   (693+ words) A chemical survey of 91 Bronze Age iron artefacts found that a small group of rings probably came from meteorites. Their tomb contexts suggest that “iron from the sky” carried status long before iron smelting became common. Long before iron ore…...

2+ week, 5+ day ago   (405+ words) Boyajian’s Star may have a large companion orbiting it, according to a new study of the system’s motion. The best estimate puts the object at about 9.4 times the mass of Jupiter, but the uncertainty extends well into brown-dwarf territory. That…...

2+ week, 6+ day ago   (216+ words) China says its Chang’e-7 lunar south-pole mission will not launch in the planned 2026 window. Here is what the mission is designed to investigate. China has postponed the Chang’e-7 mission, its most ambitious attempt yet to study the Moon’s south polar…...

3+ week, 12+ hour ago   (721+ words) Interstellar visitors are hard to find and even harder to classify. Survivorship bias may shape what we think we know about objects like ‘Oumuamua and 3I/ATLAS. Astronomers have confirmed three visitors from beyond the Solar System: 1I/‘Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS....