Gas giant of the solar system; gravity well shaping planetary formation
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has begun the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a 10-year program that will image the southern sky every few nights. The telescope has started regular operations from its Chilean mountaintop site and is already returning new detections, including thousands of asteroids and transient views such as Comet 3I/ATLAS.
Astronomers have detected helium escaping from LHS 1140b, a rocky 'super-Earth' 48 light-years away that orbits in its star's habitable zone. The finding has confirmed an atmosphere around a habitable-zone rocky exoplanet for the first time and has been published in Science; teams used ground-based infrared spectroscopy and modelling.
Scientists have captured the Sun’s surface at unprecedented resolution with the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope and other instruments and have identified widespread Kelvin–Helmholtz vortices—500–2,000km spirals of magnetised plasma. The team has linked these instabilities to how magnetic energy cascades to smaller scales and feeds flares and coronal mass ejections that produce space weather.
Skywatchers have been tracking a string of September conjunctions, phases and eclipses. Venus has paired with Spica, the Moon has aligned with the Pleiades and Mars, and a partial lunar eclipse has produced reddish tones across wide regions. The Harvest Moon will peak on 26 September and other planet oppositions and conjunctions will follow through the month.
The tomb of Yunmen, a high-ranking official, has been discovered at Saqqara, dating to Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi’s reign in Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. Archaeologists describe two chapels and vibrant paintings, with the discovery framed as part of a broader push to boost tourism.
Mercury’s diameter has been shrinking faster than previously believed, up to 30% more quickly. New maps and data from MESSENGER, combined with upcoming BepiColombo observations, are refining estimates of how internal cooling contracts the planet’s core and crust, offering a clearer window into Mercury’s evolution.