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Multi-source connectivity as the driver of solar wind variability in the heliosphere Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-28 Stephanie L. Yardley, David H. Brooks, Raffaella D’Amicis, Christopher J. Owen, David M. Long, Deb Baker, Pascal Démoulin, Mathew J. Owens, Mike Lockwood, Teodora Mihailescu, Jesse T. Coburn, Ryan M. Dewey, Daniel Müller, Gabriel H. H. Suen, Nawin Ngampoopun, Philippe Louarn, Stefano Livi, Sue Lepri, Andrzej Fludra, Margit Haberreiter, Udo Schühle
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Evidence of ongoing volcanic activity on Venus revealed by Magellan radar Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-27 Davide Sulcanese, Giuseppe Mitri, Marco Mastrogiuseppe
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The fleeting, beating heart of the Snake Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Paul Woods
Two teams of astronomers have recently discovered a potential clue to the origin of the Snake, which is more formally known as non-thermal filament G359.1−0.2, and is 70 pc in length and less than a parsec wide. Farhad Yusef-Zadeh and colleagues (Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 530, 254–263; 2024) located a fast-moving compact radio source close to the major kink in the filament, and Marcus Lower, Shi Dai
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A tristatic phased array radar system in China Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Xinan Yue, Baiqi Ning, Lin Jin, Chi Wang
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Widespread CO2 and CO ices in the trans-Neptunian population revealed by JWST/DiSCo-TNOs Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-22 Mário N. De Prá, Elsa Hénault, Noemí Pinilla-Alonso, Bryan J. Holler, Rosario Brunetto, John A. Stansberry, Ana Carolina de Souza Feliciano, Jorge M. Carvano, Brittany Harvison, Javier Licandro, Thomas G. Müller, Nuno Peixinho, Vania Lorenzi, Aurélie Guilbert-Lepoutre, Michele T. Bannister, Yvonne J. Pendleton, Dale P. Cruikshank, Charles A. Schambeau, Lucas McClure, Joshua P. Emery
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The fillings of a protoplanetary layer cake Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-21 Paul Woods
Using well-polished techniques, the emission surfaces of vertically extended molecular lines were extracted from the observations, giving a map of molecular layers (see image): 12CO is found to trace a height of z/r ≈ 0.3, HCO+ z/r ≈ 0.2, 13CO z/r ≈ 0.1 and C18O the disk midplane. Features such as the cleared-out cavity wall at around 45 au (in the 12CO J = 3–2 panel) can be distinguished. One can
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Planet-sized laboratories offer cosmological insights Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-21 Morgan Hollis
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission is scheduled to be humanity’s first space-based gravitational wave (GW) detector when launched in the mid-2030s. In an intriguing proof-of-concept study, Tao Liu, Jing Ren and Chen Zhang suggest a novel method of using planetary magnetospheres as detectors for high-frequency gravitational waves (HFGWs), utilizing space-based instrumentation that
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Hydrogen escape on Mars dominated by water vapour photolysis above the hygropause Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-21 Armin Kleinböhl, Karen Willacy, Marek J. Slipski, Loïc Poncin, Jasper S. Halekas, Majd Mayyasi
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A unified framework for global auroral morphologies of different planets Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-20 B. Zhang, Z. Yao, O. J. Brambles, P. A. Delamere, W. Lotko, D. Grodent, B. Bonfond, J. Chen, K. A. Sorathia, V. G. Merkin, J. G. Lyon
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More hints of Planet Nine Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 Luca Maltagliati
One of the most debated issues in Solar System studies of the last decade is whether there is a massive body hidden beyond the orbit of Neptune, known as ‘Planet Nine’ (P9). Invisible to direct observations so far, its presence has been hinted at by its effects on the dynamics of the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO) population, and many works have been published to support or disprove the significance
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A bullying problem reveals an astronomy and geophysics community in crisis Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-17 Áine Clare O’Brien, Sheila Kanani, Robert Massey, Natasha R. Stephen
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Magnetism in massive stars from mergers Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Bishwanath Gaire
Magnetic fields in stars are mass dependent. Lower-mass stars like the Sun sustain a magnetic field, but only about 7% of the massive stars (with eight or more solar masses) have large-scale surface magnetic fields. The origin of such magnetic fields is unclear. Abigail Frost and colleagues investigate a binary system of two massive stars (HD 148937) using interferometric and spectroscopic methods
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Detection of an Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting the nearby ultracool dwarf star SPECULOOS-3 Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-15 Michaël Gillon, Peter P. Pedersen, Benjamin V. Rackham, Georgina Dransfield, Elsa Ducrot, Khalid Barkaoui, Artem Y. Burdanov, Urs Schroffenegger, Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew, Susan M. Lederer, Roi Alonso, Adam J. Burgasser, Steve B. Howell, Norio Narita, Julien de Wit, Brice-Olivier Demory, Didier Queloz, Amaury H. M. J. Triaud, Laetitia Delrez, Emmanuël Jehin, Matthew J. Hooton, Lionel J. Garcia, Clàudia
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An extended low-density atmosphere around the Jupiter-sized planet WASP-193 b Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Khalid Barkaoui, Francisco J. Pozuelos, Coel Hellier, Barry Smalley, Louise D. Nielsen, Prajwal Niraula, Michaël Gillon, Julien de Wit, Simon Müller, Caroline Dorn, Ravit Helled, Emmanuel Jehin, Brice-Olivier Demory, Valerie Van Grootel, Abderahmane Soubkiou, Mourad Ghachoui, David. R. Anderson, Zouhair Benkhaldoun, Francois Bouchy, Artem Burdanov, Laetitia Delrez, Elsa Ducrot, Lionel Garcia, Abdelhadi
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Low-temperature formation of pyridine and (iso)quinoline via neutral–neutral reactions Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-13 Zhenghai Yang, Chao He, Shane J. Goettl, Alexander M. Mebel, Paulo F. G. Velloso, Márcio O. Alves, Breno R. L. Galvão, Jean-Christophe Loison, Kevin M. Hickson, Michel Dobrijevic, Xiaohu Li, Ralf I. Kaiser
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The metal-poor atmosphere of a potential sub-Neptune progenitor Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-09 Saugata Barat, Jean-Michel Désert, Allona Vazan, Robin Baeyens, Michael R. Line, Jonathan J. Fortney, Trevor J. David, John H. Livingston, Bob Jacobs, Vatsal Panwar, Hinna Shivkumar, Kamen O. Todorov, Lorenzo Pino, Georgia Mraz, Erik A. Petigura
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Characterization of the regimes of hydrodynamic escape from low-mass exoplanets Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-09 J. H. Guo
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Characterization of the decametre sky at subarcminute resolution Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-06 C. Groeneveld, R. J. van Weeren, E. Osinga, W. L. Williams, J. R. Callingham, F. de Gasperin, A. Botteon, T. Shimwell, F. Sweijen, J. M. G. H. J. de Jong, L. F. Jansen, G. K. Miley, G. Brunetti, M. Brüggen, H. J. A. Röttgering
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Nightside clouds form and winds drive disequilibrium chemistry on a hot Jupiter Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-30
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Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-30 Taylor J. Bell, Nicolas Crouzet, Patricio E. Cubillos, Laura Kreidberg, Anjali A. A. Piette, Michael T. Roman, Joanna K. Barstow, Jasmina Blecic, Ludmila Carone, Louis-Philippe Coulombe, Elsa Ducrot, Mark Hammond, João M. Mendonça, Julianne I. Moses, Vivien Parmentier, Kevin B. Stevenson, Lucas Teinturier, Michael Zhang, Natalie M. Batalha, Jacob L. Bean, Björn Benneke, Benjamin Charnay, Katy L. Chubb
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A low-density ocean inside Titan inferred from Cassini data Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-29 Sander Goossens, Bob van Noort, Alfonso Mateo, Erwan Mazarico, Wouter van der Wal
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On our bookshelf Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 May Chiao
What’s Hidden Inside Planets? Sabine Stanley & John WenzJohns Hopkins: 2023. 245pp. $16.95 Next time you look up at a colourful auroral display in the ionosphere, give a thought to the Earth’s molten iron core that makes the shimmering light show possible. As Sabine Stanley explains in What’s Hidden Inside Planets, there is quite a lot going on beneath the surface — from the processes controlling the
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Maintaining spherical polarization in solar wind plasma Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Bishwanath Gaire
The solar wind consists of plasma with fluctuating velocity and magnetic fields in a manner often referred to as Alfvénic. A magnetic field (B) and its fluctuation (δB) with only a small change in its intensity (that is, δB/B ~1) is called spherical polarization. For large-amplitude magnetic fields, this condition (δB/B ~1) is equivalent to the rotation of the magnetic field vector. When the plasma
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Under new management Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
As the eighth anniversary of Nature Astronomy’s opening to submissions nears, we say goodbye to our inaugural Chief Editor, May Chiao, and welcome her successor, Paul Woods, to the helm.
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Magnetic Reconnection on Z experiments Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Bishwanath Gaire
Magnetic energy in magnetized plasma is converted into kinetic energy through magnetic reconnection; a phenomenon that commonly occurs in astrophysical plasma and has been observed in laboratory plasma. Radiative cooling can disrupt such an energy transfer process. Rishabh Datta et al. have studied strong radiative cooling in a laboratory experiment called Magnetic Reconnection on Z (MARZ), using the
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The hunt for PeVatrons as the origin of the most energetic photons observed in the Galaxy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Emma de Oña Wilhelmi, Ruben López-Coto, Felix Aharonian, Elena Amato, Zhen Cao, Stefano Gabici, Jim Hinton
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Venus as an anchor point for planetary habitability Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Stephen R. Kane, Paul K. Byrne
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Orbital polarimetric tomography of a flare near the Sagittarius A* supermassive black hole Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Aviad Levis, Andrew A. Chael, Katherine L. Bouman, Maciek Wielgus, Pratul P. Srinivasan
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Revealing the 3D structure of a flare orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22
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In situ observation of mass ejections caused by magnetic reconnections in the ionosphere of Mars Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-22 Yudong Ye, Xiaojun Xu, Lou-Chuang Lee, Jiang Yu, Jing Wang, Bei Zhu, Qing Chang, Jiaying Xu, Qi Xu, Zilu Zhou
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Reply to: Highlighting the back-action contribution of matter to quantum sensor network performance in multi-messenger astronomy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Andrei Derevianko, Derek F. Jackson Kimball, Conner Dailey
replying to Y. Stadnik Nature Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02245-4 (2024) Recently, along with a team of collaborators, we proposed that quantum sensor networks could be used for a multi-messenger astronomy in a new exotic physics modality1; that is, a search for signals from high-energy astrophysical events that produce intense bursts of exotic low-mass fields (ELFs) associated with
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Highlighting the back-action contribution of matter to quantum sensor network performance in multi-messenger astronomy Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yevgeny V. Stadnik
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Free-floating binary planets from ejections during close stellar encounters Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yihan Wang, Rosalba Perna, Zhaohuan Zhu
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Asteroid Kamo‘oalewa’s journey from the lunar Giordano Bruno crater to Earth 1:1 resonance Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-19 Yifei Jiao, Bin Cheng, Yukun Huang, Erik Asphaug, Brett Gladman, Renu Malhotra, Patrick Michel, Yang Yu, Hexi Baoyin
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Hints of a physical origin for the S8 tension Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Morgan Hollis
The open problems of the S8 tension and its close cousin, the Hubble tension, are some of the key cosmological challenges to the reigning champion of models of the Universe, ΛCDM. Undetermined systematic effects in the measured datasets are often invoked in an attempt to explain these tensions, however S.A. Adil et al. suggest a physical origin of the discrepancy, based on a Bayesian prior analysis
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Expanding our limits with Euclid Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Luca Maltagliati
Euclid is the latest space telescope launched by the European Space Agency, on 1 July 2023. By surveying a third of the sky during its 6-year nominal mission with its two cameras, covering the visible and near-infrared range between 0.53 and 1.85 µm, Euclid is focused on understanding the role of dark energy and dark matter in the evolution of the Universe. However, Euclid will provide insight in other
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High-resolution observations and numerical simulations provide insight into solar atmospheric heating Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15
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Sputnik Planitia as an impactor remnant indicative of an ancient rocky mascon in an oceanless Pluto Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Harry A. Ballantyne, Erik Asphaug, C. Adeene Denton, Alexandre Emsenhuber, Martin Jutzi
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Chromospheric and coronal heating in an active region plage by dissipation of currents from braiding Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Souvik Bose, Bart De Pontieu, Viggo Hansteen, Alberto Sainz Dalda, Sabrina Savage, Amy Winebarger
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Decomposing data at distance Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Paul Woods
Emission lines from molecules and their ions can act as diagnostic tools of distant and even extragalactic interstellar media. Using ALMA, Nanase Harada et al. present an atlas of images of nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253, which has been created from 148 unblended emission lines arising from 44 different species. Using a principal component analysis (PCA) to reduce the dimension of the data space,
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Innovative measurements of stellar mass loss Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Bradford J. Wargelin
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X-ray detection of astrospheres around three main-sequence stars and their mass-loss rates Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 K. G. Kislyakova, M. Güdel, D. Koutroumpa, J. A. Carter, C. M. Lisse, S. Boro Saikia
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Identification of the weak-to-strong transition in Alfvénic turbulence from space plasma Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Siqi Zhao, Huirong Yan, Terry Z. Liu, Ka Ho Yuen, Huizi Wang
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JWST detection of a supernova associated with GRB 221009A without an r-process signature Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Peter K. Blanchard, V. Ashley Villar, Ryan Chornock, Tanmoy Laskar, Yijia Li, Joel Leja, Justin Pierel, Edo Berger, Raffaella Margutti, Kate D. Alexander, Jennifer Barnes, Yvette Cendes, Tarraneh Eftekhari, Daniel Kasen, Natalie LeBaron, Brian D. Metzger, James Muzerolle Page, Armin Rest, Huei Sears, Daniel M. Siegel, S. Karthik Yadavalli
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BepiColombo observations of cold oxygen and carbon ions in the flank of the induced magnetosphere of Venus Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 L. Z. Hadid, D. Delcourt, Y. Saito, M. Fränz, S. Yokota, B. Fiethe, C. Verdeil, B. Katra, F. Leblanc, H. Fischer, M. Persson, S. Aizawa, N. André, Y. Harada, A. Fedorov, D. Fontaine, N. Krupp, H. Michalik, J-J. Berthelier, H. Krüger, G. Murakami, S. Matsuda, D. Heyner, H.-U. Auster, I. Richter, J. Z. D. Mieth, D. Schmid, D. Fischer
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Magnetic origin of the discrepancy between stellar limb-darkening models and observations Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-12 Nadiia M. Kostogryz, Alexander I. Shapiro, Veronika Witzke, Robert H. Cameron, Laurent Gizon, Natalie A. Krivova, Hans-G. Ludwig, Pierre F. L. Maxted, Sara Seager, Sami K. Solanki, Jeff Valenti
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A call for Indigenous partnership in the return to the Moon Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-11 Frank Tavares, Monica Vidaurri, Adeene Denton, J. A. Grier, Alvin Harvey, Moses Milazzo, Hunter Olson, Parvathy Prem, Daniella Scalice, Aparna Venkatesan
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An anorthositic meteorite supporting an ancient magma ocean on Vesta Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Shijie Li, Dongliang Zhang, Qiao Shu, Huiming Bao, Xiaobin Cao, Jia Liu, Liping Qin, Yan Fan, Shenghua Zhou, Dehan Shen, Mingbao Li
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Linear to circular conversion in the polarized radio emission of a magnetar Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Marcus E. Lower, Simon Johnston, Maxim Lyutikov, Donald B. Melrose, Ryan M. Shannon, Patrick Weltevrede, Manisha Caleb, Fernando Camilo, Andrew D. Cameron, Shi Dai, George Hobbs, Di Li, Kaustubh M. Rajwade, John E. Reynolds, John M. Sarkissian, Benjamin W. Stappers
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A model for heating the super-hot corona in solar active regions Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Zekun Lu, Feng Chen, M. D. Ding, Can Wang, Yu Dai, Xin Cheng
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A freely precessing magnetar following an X-ray outburst Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-08 Gregory Desvignes, Patrick Weltevrede, Yong Gao, David Ian Jones, Michael Kramer, Manisha Caleb, Ramesh Karuppusamy, Lina Levin, Kuo Liu, Andrew G. Lyne, Lijing Shao, Ben Stappers, Jérôme Pétri
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Unusual Ti minerals on the Moon produced by space weathering Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Xiaojia Zeng, Yanxue Wu, Wen Yu, Bing Mo, Yuanyun Wen, Xiaomei Zhao, Xiongyao Li, Xiaoping Zhang, Jianzhong Liu
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Rapidly rotating or not? Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 May Chiao
Evolved stars are expected to rotate, but ALMA observations of a dipolar velocity field at Betelgeuse suggest an extremely rapid rotation rate of 5.47 ± 0.25 km s-1, which is two orders of magnitude faster than predicted. Ma et al. test whether the dipolar structure could come from a nonrotating star instead. For instance, two large surface convective cells moving in opposite directions could mimic
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TheCannon for abundances in solar analogues Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Luca Maltagliati
Various observations indicate that the Sun is depleted in refractory elements compared to the majority of Sun-like stars. Rayna Rampalli and colleagues extract abundances of such elements in thousands of Sun-like stars from spectra obtained by different surveys, in order to confirm the depletion and set constraints on its causes. The authors use TheCannon, an algorithm that is trained on a highly precise
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Cosmic recipe book updated Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Paul Woods
A pioneer of Open Science in astronomy, the UMIST Database for Astrochemistry (UDfA) has recently released its sixth iteration and now contains 8,767 gas-phase chemical reactions — involving 737 chemical species — and their reaction rate coefficients. This is an increase of more than 40% in comparison to the previous version, released in 2013. The growth reflects the number of reaction rates measured
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Enrichment by extragalactic first stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-20 Anirudh Chiti, Mohammad Mardini, Guilherme Limberg, Anna Frebel, Alexander P. Ji, Henrique Reggiani, Peter Ferguson, Hillary Diane Andales, Kaley Brauer, Ting S. Li, Joshua D. Simon
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Sowing the seeds of early galaxy evolution Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-19 Morgan Hollis
The emergence of massive black holes early on in the history of the Universe is a topic brought to the fore by recent JWST results. If these behemoths formed according to the conventional paradigm — with growth mechanisms taking place over billions of years — then how can there be as many as we now observe, already in existence so soon after the Big Bang? Roberto Maiolino and collaborators seek to
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Insights from LHAASO and IceCube into the origin of the Galactic diffuse teraelectronvolt–petaelectronvolt emission Nat. Astron. (IF 14.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Kai Yan, Ruo-Yu Liu, Rui Zhang, Chao-Ming Li, Qiang Yuan, Xiang-Yu Wang