Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Astronomy and planetary science are the study of objects and phenomena that occur beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. This includes investigating stars and their interaction with each other and the planetary systems that orbit them.
Phase-curve observations of the ‘hot Jupiter’ exoplanet WASP-43b, made at mid-infrared wavelengths using JWST, provide evidence that fast winds limit the formation of methane on the cooler, cloudy nightside of the planet.
Observations have revealed a galaxy that stopped forming stars earlier than expected. This discovery offers clues about when the first galaxies emerged and sheds light on how stars formed when the Universe was in its infancy.
Computer simulations based on the prevailing cosmological model, ΛCDM, reproduce many observed properties of our Universe. But a study of coherent satellite motions in galaxy clusters yields discrepancies that challenge the definition of ‘today’.
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are transient events and GRB 221009A was a particularly interesting event due to its brightness and duration. Here, the authors show detection of delayed 400 GeV photon from GRB 221009A, which may indicate cascade emission scenario.
Simulations show that the competing effects of the solar wind and planetary rotation can explain the structure of planetary aurorae: the former dominates for Earth-type and the latter for Jupiter-type aurorae, with the highly variable aurorae at Saturn representing a transition state.
Machine learning-based surrogate models are important to model complex systems at a reduced computational cost; however, they must often be re-evaluated and adapted for validity on future data. Diaw and colleagues propose an online training method leveraging optimizer-directed sampling to produce surrogate models that can be applied to any future data and demonstrate the approach on a dense nuclear-matter equation of state containing a phase transition.