The hot-Jupiter exoplanet HIP 67522b orbits its parent star, HIP 67522, so tightly that it appears to cause frequent flares from the star’s surface, heating and inflating the planet’s atmosphere, according an analysis of data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and ESA’s CHaracterising ExoPlanets Telescope (CHEOPS).
An artist’s impression of the young planetary system HIP 67522. Image credit: J. Fohlmeister, AIP.
HIP 67522 is a G0-type star located about 417 light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus.
Otherwise known as HD 120411, 2MASS J13500627-4050090 and TYC 7794-2268-1, the star is a member of the Scorpius-Centaurus stellar association.
HIP 67522 is approximately 17 million years old, and hosts two young exoplanets.
The inner planet, HIP 67522b, orbits the star once every 7 days and is about 10 times the diameter of Earth, or close to that of Jupiter.
Using five years of data from NASA’s TESS and ESA’s CHEOPS telescopes, ASTRON astronomer Ekaterina Ilin and her colleagues took a closer look at the HIP 67522 system.
They found that the planet and its host star form a powerful but likely a destructive bond.
In a manner not yet fully understood, the planet hooks into the star’s magnetic field, triggering flares on the star’s surface; the flares whiplash energy back to the planet.
Combined with other high-energy radiation from the star, the flare-induced heating appears to have increased the already steep inflation of the planet’s atmosphere.
This might well mean that the planet won’t stay in the Jupiter size-range for long.
One effect of being continually pummeled with intense radiation could be a loss of atmosphere over time.
In another 100 million years, that could shrink the planet to the status of a hot Neptune, or, with a more radical loss of atmosphere, even a sub-Neptune, a planet type smaller than Neptune that is common in our Galaxy but lacking in our Solar System.
“We’ve found the first clear evidence of flaring star-planet interaction, where a planet triggers energetic eruptions on its host star,” said Dr. Ilin, first author of a paper published in the journal Nature.
“What’s particularly exciting is that this interaction has persisted for at least three years, allowing us to study it in detail.”
“This type of star-planet interaction has been expected for a long time, but getting the observational evidence was only possible with this large space telescope dataset,” said Dr. Katja Poppenhäger, an astronomer at the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam and the Universität Potsdam.
“The planet is essentially subjecting itself to an intense bombardment of radiation and particles from these induced flares,” said Dr. Harish Vedantham, an astronomer at ASTRON.
“This self-inflicted space weather likely causes the planet’s atmosphere to puff up and may dramatically accelerate the rate at which the planet is losing its atmosphere.”
In an accompanying paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the astronomers confirm that HIP 67522 is a magnetically active star with strong radio wave emission powered by its magnetic field.
They observed the star at low radio frequencies for about 135 hours with the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), revealing it as a bright and bursty source of radio waves.
At the same time, they found no signs of radio wave flares that could be attributed to the interaction of the star with the planet.
“The non-detection is compatible with expectations that the planet-induced flares are too faint to be detected by ATCA, in line with the Nature paper’s conclusion of magnetic star-planet interaction driving flaring activity,” they said.
_____
Ekaterina Ilin et al. Close-in planet induces flares on its host star. Nature, published online July 2, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41586-025-09236-z
Ekaterina Ilin et al. 2025. Searching for planet-induced radio signal from the young close-in planet host star HIP 67522. A&A, in press; doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202554684
NASA and its partners will discuss the upcoming crew rotation to the International Space Station during a pair of news conferences on Thursday, July 10, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
First is an overview news conference at 12 p.m. EDT with mission leadership discussing final launch and mission preparations on the agency’s YouTube channel.
Next, crew will participate in a news conference at 2 p.m. on NASA’s YouTube channel, followed by individual astronaut interviews at 3 p.m. This is the final media opportunity with Crew-11 before they travel to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for launch.
The Crew-11 mission, targeted to launch in late July/early August, will carry NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Kimiya Yui, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov to the orbiting laboratory. The crew will launch aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A.
United States-based media seeking to attend in person must contact the NASA Johnson newsroom no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, July 7, at 281-483-5111 or jsccommu@mail.nasa.gov. A copy of NASA’s media accreditation policy is available online.
Any media interested in participating in the news conferences by phone must contact the Johnson newsroom by 9:45 a.m. the day of the event. Media seeking virtual interviews with the crew must submit requests to the Johnson newsroom by 5 p.m. on Monday, July 7.
Briefing participants are as follows (all times Eastern and subject to change based on real-time operations):
12 p.m.: Mission Overview News Conference
Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, NASA Kennedy
Bill Spetch, operations integration manager, International Space Station Program, NASA Johnson
NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate representative
Sarah Walker, director, Dragon Mission Management, SpaceX
Mayumi Matsuura, vice president and director general, Human Spaceflight Technology Directorate, JAXA
Crew-11 members available for a limited number of interviews
Selected as a NASA astronaut in 2017, Cardman will conduct her first spaceflight. The Williamsburg, Virginia, native holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a master’s in Marine Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the time of selection, she was pursuing a doctorate in geosciences. Cardman’s geobiology and geochemical cycling research focused on subsurface environments, from caves to deep sea sediments. Since completing initial training, Cardman has supported real-time station operations and lunar surface exploration planning. Follow @zenanaut on X and @zenanaut on Instagram.
This will be Fincke’s fourth trip to the space station, having logged 382 days in space and nine spacewalks during Expedition 9 in 2004, Expedition 18 in 2008, and STS-134 in 2011, the final flight of space shuttle Endeavour. Throughout the past decade, Fincke has applied his expertise to NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, advancing the development and testing of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Boeing Starliner spacecraft toward operational certification. The Emsworth, Pennsylvania, native is a graduate of the United States Air Force Test Pilot School and holds bachelors’ degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in both aeronautics and astronautics, as well as Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences. He also has a master’s degree in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University in California. Fincke is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel with more than 2,000 flight hours in over 30 different aircraft. Follow @AstroIronMike on X and Instagram.
With 142 days in space, this will be Yui’s second trip to the space station. After his selection as a JAXA astronaut in 2009, Yui flew as a flight engineer for Expedition 44/45 and became the first Japanese astronaut to capture JAXA’s H-II Transfer Vehicle using the station’s robotic arm. In addition to constructing a new experimental environment aboard Kibo, he conducted a total of 21 experiments for JAXA. In November 2016, Yui was assigned as chief of the JAXA Astronaut Group. He graduated from the School of Science and Engineering at the National Defense Academy of Japan in 1992. He later joined the Air Self-Defense Force at the Japan Defense Agency (currently the Ministry of Defense). In 2008, Yui joined the Air Staff Office at the Ministry of Defense as a lieutenant colonel. Follow @astro_kimiya on X.
The Crew-11 mission also will be Platonov’s first spaceflight. Before his selection as a cosmonaut in 2018, Platonov earned a degree in engineering from Krasnodar Air Force Academy in aircraft operations and air traffic management. He also earned a bachelor’s degree in state and municipal management in 2016 from the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, Russia. Assigned as a test cosmonaut in 2021, he has experience in piloting aircraft, zero gravity training, scuba diving, and wilderness survival.
‘This is the central region of the Bullet Cluster, which is made up of two massive galaxy clusters. The vast number of galaxies and foreground stars in the image were captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light. Glowing, hot X-rays captured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory appear in pink. The blue represents the dark matter, which was precisely mapped by researchers with Webb’s detailed imaging. Normally, gas, dust, stars, and dark matter are combined into galaxies, even when they are gravitationally bound within larger groups known as galaxy clusters. The Bullet Cluster is unusual in that the intracluster gas and dark matter are separated, offering further evidence in support of dark matter. (See the defined galaxy clusters within the dashed circle.’ | Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC; Science: James Jee (Yonsei University/UC Davis), Sangjun Cha (Yonsei University), Kyle Finner (IPAC at Caltech)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Chandra X-ray Observatory combined their efforts to look at the Bullet Cluster in a new way, enabling scientists to precisely map the cluster’s dark matter.
Webb’s near-infrared imaging capabilities enabled astronomers to capture the highest detailed images yet of the Bullet Cluster, which comprises a pair of massive galaxy clusters. With Webb’s highly sensitive cameras, researchers can see fainter, more distant galaxies in the Bullet Cluster than ever before.
“With Webb’s observations, we carefully measured the mass of the Bullet Cluster with the largest lensing dataset to date, from the galaxy clusters’ cores all the way out to their outskirts,” says Sangjun Cha, the lead author on a new research paper published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Cha is a PhD student at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
“Webb’s images dramatically improve what we can measure in this scene — including pinpointing the position of invisible particles known as dark matter,” adds Kyle Finner, a co-author of the new research paper and an assistant scientist at IPAC at Caltech in Pasadena, California.
As NASA explains, “all galaxies are made up of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter, which are bound together by gravity.” The Bullet Cluster is not just a galaxy, but a grouping of two “very massive collections of galaxies.”
The galaxy clusters, which are massive and therefore have powerful gravitational forces, can act as gravitational lenses that significantly magnify the light of background galaxies. The amount of gravitational lensing, when compared against the amount of visible mass in a cluster, enables scientists to infer the distribution of invisible dark matter.
Bullet Cluster — NIRCam image
“Gravitational lensing allows us to infer the distribution of dark matter,” says co-author James Jee, professor at Yonsei University and research associate at UC Davis in California.
It is helpful to think about gravitational lensing and dark matter using a metaphor of a pond filled with crystal-clear water and pebbles, Jee says.
“You cannot see the water unless there is wind, which causes ripples,” the scientist explains. “Those ripples distort the shapes of the pebbles below, causing the water to act like a lens.” This same phenomenon occurs in space, where the water represents dark matter, and the pebbles in the example represent background galaxies.
With Webb’s imaging capabilities, it is much easier to see and measure the galaxies, including the background ones, meaning it is possible to weigh both visible and invisible matter (dark matter) in the galaxy clusters. The researchers also mapped and measured the collective light emitted by intracluster stars. These are stars that are no longer bound to an individual galaxy.
“We confirmed that the intracluster light can be a reliable tracer of dark matter, even in a highly dynamic environment like the Bullet Cluster,” Cha says. If intracluster stars are not bound to galaxies, and instead are bound to dark matter, scientists could learn much more about dark matter and its distribution.
Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC; Science: James Jee (Yonsei University/UC Davis), Sangjun Cha (Yonsei University), Kyle Finner (IPAC at Caltech). Video credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
In his new book ’52 Assignments: Night Photography’, award-winning astrophotographer Josh Dury invites you to raise your lens and embark on a journey through the night sky to capture everything from the moon and Milky Way, to satellite megaconstellations and aurora.
The latest book in Ammonite Press’ popular ’52 Assignments’ series seeks to demystify the technically demanding hobby of astrophotography by offering stargazers a year’s worth of weekly workshops packed with advice and photography techniques for capturing the night sky.
Each assignment will help aspiring astrophotographers gain a better understanding of how their camera performs at night, while arming them with the technical knowledge and tricks of the trade needed to capture spectacular images of the post-sunset realm.
Space.com caught up with Dury to discuss his experience of writing the book, how aspiring astrophotographers can benefit from the assignments, and the importance of capturing unique images of the night sky.
A composite image showing satellite trails criss-crossing the night sky. (Image credit: Josh Dury)
Josh Dury: The whole experience really started off from a very young age, when I was seven years old. Back then, there were children’s programs about the planet Mars, and it was when I purchased my first telescope that [I was] ultimately encouraged me to look up to life on other worlds, at the planets of the solar system. I thought, well, how can I document that?
So it began by taking images with these planetary cameras at the time. But then I pursued an education and then a degree in photography, and now pursuing a career as a landscape astrophotographer. It’s one of those bucket list things I’ve always wished to do to educate others, which is to publish a book. But at the same time, when I was approached by Ammonite Press, [there were] very pressing issues in the astrophotography community.
With the [rising] popularity of taking images of the night sky and the Milky Way, not only are we seeing environmental effects of light pollution and artificial light at night, but we’re also seeing consequences of [so many people] going to dark sky places — hundreds of photographers in one go producing artificial light in dark sky areas. And so this book aims to promote sustainable astrophotography so that we can take further respect and consideration for the night sky and also just the etiquette of being respectful of other photographers in these dark sky areas. I feel it’s a pressing issue at the moment that needs to be addressed.
Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
You’re a passionate dark sky advocate, yet a number of the assignments that you picked out specifically take aim at light pollution and the satellites that crisscross our sky. Could you tell me a little bit more about your process, your thought process, and including them as targets in the book?
I think it’s very important to take images of light polluted areas, because it demonstrates the state of affairs in which we are living. The majority of the British public and further afield live under light polluted skies. When I was a youngster living on the Mendip Hills, I was one of the lucky ones [who got] to look up at the beautiful dark skies and see the Milky Way glowing on down, but also the pressing issues that have come from that.
“…are we potentially the last generation that will see the night’s sky in its entirety?”
As a delegate of Dark Sky International, I work with a group of like minded people who are producing research on the impacts of light pollution. So not only the effects to astronomers and astrophotographers like myself, but also wildlife conservation, how light at night is affecting nocturnal and marine wildlife as well as ourselves. Human health, how exposure to light at night affects chemical reactions during our sleeping patterns, our circadian rhythm and effectively affecting melatonin cycles. But [there’s] also the next pressing issue, which is satellite megaconstellations. I respect the fact that it’s very much a double edged sword.
We live in the 21st Century. We need internet technology, globally, across the world, for communication. But there’s also the pressing issue of what it’s doing to the night sky?
It is a concerning issue, and it’s going to grow. So it’s my concern as a delegate and an astrophotographer: are we potentially the last generation that will see the night sky in its entirety?
So including satellites as targets in the book was your way of grabbing people and making them look directly at the issue?
“You don’t need the latest photographic technologies to get a good image.”
Exactly, and even just after sundown, Anthony, when you look up, you will see them easily. You’ll just see one after another moving throughout the night. So when an avid or professional photographer takes an image of the sky, and they see one of the trails, they will easily — through the assignments — be able to identify what is a meteor and what is a satellite.
And I think it’s that readdressing issue of: ‘what is it we are looking at, what is it all about?’ I believe the connection between being an astronomer and an astrophotographer is to really know your subjects, because without that prior knowledge, things can easily be mistaken for [one another] in the night sky.
One of the assignments gives advice on how to capture a rare ‘planetary parade.’ (Image credit: Josh Dury)
Astrophotography is an inherently intimidating and technically demanding hobby, especially for beginners. That said, your book does a great job of demystifying the terms and camera settings needed to capture the night sky by breaking it down into individual projects, each of which adds to the user skill set and confidence over time. Could you walk us through your process when it came to creating the assignments?
Really it was putting myself back in my shoes when I was a youngster, but also the experience of being involved with astronomical societies, photographic societies, and years of research. Astrophotography is a technically competent area or niche within photography and so, as opposed to taking an image of, say, a sunset, or architecture, we’re dealing with much longer exposures. And also, we need to let as much light into our cameras as possible — identified as the aperture of our camera lenses — but we also have what’s called ISO (camera sensitivity) and so again, it’s just trying to break down these barriers. You don’t need the latest photographic technologies to get a good image.
I still take a lot of my images on a Sony α7S II, which is considered a more traditional model of the α7 series, but it’s still more than competent [enough] to take these quality images. One pressing issue, I would say, however, is the camera. You need a good quality piece of glass. In the past couple of years I’ve been lucky enough to work with Sigma as a leading purveyor for astrophotography style lenses, dealing with F numbers like f 1.4 that let the light into your camera. That’s where the cutting edge technology comes in, and quite frankly, breaking new boundaries to test this equipment and hopefully the ambition of making it more accessible to everyone.
The assignments tend to provide a structure for the shoot, and then you ask the photographer to go off and put their own personal touches on the composition. What were the challenges when it came to finding the line between handholding and simply providing the necessary structure for newcomers to enjoy the pastime?
“When a viewer or a potential client is looking on their mobile devices at hundreds of submissions all the time, they’re looking for images that are unique and not those same compositions.”
I have taken it upon myself to think deep within what is of interest to me, through my background, through ancient astronomy and stone circles and ancient sites. But I also appreciate that there have been purveyors in astrophotography who were there long before I was and have their own take on the astrophotography landscape. This is my concern when I see locations which have been photographed a hundred times or more, [how can you find] originality?
And so the book is there to speak to the reader, to dive deep into what interests them, and to [help them] apply that knowledge to produce an image that has never been seen before. So it could be one of your hobbies, it could be one of your interests, somewhere where you like walking, your own area of the landscape. Just something new, something refreshing.
When a viewer or a potential client is looking on their mobile devices at hundreds of submissions all the time, they’re looking for images that are unique and not those same compositions. And most importantly, it’s got [to have] an interesting story to tell. So I’ll give you one example, which is one of the assignments titled ‘Meteor Showers.’ So the image [I took as an example] was the Perseid meteors over Stonehenge. Yes, okay, it’s been photographed millions of times before, but it’s somewhere of interest to me. I thought ‘I’m trying out a particular lens here. I want to capture the Milky Way [tumbling] down’. Just being a creative mind, I can picture it in my mind already and [I] executed this image over three and a half hours. It was endorsed by NASA, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and the European Space Agency. So to have this backing, even by a scientific journal, was huge and it just shows where originality goes a long way.
Perseid meteors captured streaking through the skies over Stonehenge in Wiltshire, UK. (Image credit: Josh Dury)
Do you have a personal favorite assignment that you keep coming back to?
I would say it would have to be one of the final assignments, which is traveling far afield. Not only have I been lucky enough to go to some of the darkest skies in the world, but also to make friendships through the experience. So that particular photograph [Assignment 51] captures the iconic Moai statues of Easter Island from the southern hemisphere skies, and the photograph wouldn’t be possible without the support of the local Islanders and the community. And this is again something which is very easily forgotten in astrophotography today, is that there are people who help you along the way.
Towards the end of the book, you get to the aspirational, bucket list shots that people eventually want to get. But it was really refreshing that throughout, for quite a few of the assignments all you needed was a camera and a tripod, there was no real barrier to entry. If you are already a photographer or have any interest in it, you’ve probably already got most of this gear and then you can just enjoy it and embrace it (and maybe pick up a star tracker).
“With astrophotography, it’s about having fun.”
Well, this is it. So you take yourself on that initial journey. So you start off with the basics, your tripod, your camera, and then as you begin to learn more about your camera and how it operates, is then the realization that if I want to take even cleaner, crisper images, that I will need to deploy the use of a star tracker.
And so it’s just trying to break down what this information means to an audience, and that with one of these devices, you can track the sky for a longer period of time, so that, yes, you can use the longer exposures, you can bring down the ISO levels and produce a cleaner image. But by that point, already, you’re learning. And this is the whole point of the book is to take you for a guided rhythm, really, of the assignments themselves.
A colorful aurora captured above a Norman church situated on the Knowlton Henge earthwork in Dorset, UK. (Image credit: Josh Dury)
So what do you think would be one of the most difficult photography concepts or techniques for a newcomer to pick up that’s included in your book?
There’s a number. So I would say, first of all, image stacking, which is addressed in the assignments. Why is there a need to stack images? So at night we have to remember that, as we have camera settings with a greater sensitivity [and] a longer exposure, when the camera has produced the image you’ll zoom in on it and it almost looks like the surface of sandpaper — it’s very textured. And so the purpose of stacking is so that computer software — Photoshop, being one of them — can read the individual images and, like a cake, stack them together. And so by doing that, it increases what’s known as the signal-to-noise ratio and produces a cleaner image as a result. And then you can produce those minor adjustments to make the Milky Way more representative of what you’ve seen on the night.
Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readers about the book?
“…by remaining true to yourself, you interact with your subjects more.”
With astrophotography, it’s about having fun. That is what I’ve learned throughout the experience. But also not to be put off by numbers and competition, that’s so easily done now, by social media, peer pressure, likes and the modern day following count, none of that at all. Do it for the reason you enjoy doing it and the love of the subject.
Final question — for someone who picks the book up this week to start their journey in astrophotography, what is the one piece of golden advice that you would give them to carry through their entire journey?
Remain true to yourself. It’s something I don’t see very often in astrophotography, but by remaining true to yourself, you interact with your subjects more. It becomes an emotional experience, and through that connection and understanding of a story, [you get] an image that has never been seen before, and ultimately to connect with our open window that is the universe.
This interview has been edited for length. You can buy ’52 Assignments: Night Photography’ at Amazon.com.
Biomass refers to the total mass of living plant material in an area, typically measured as dry weight. Forest biomass includes the trunks, branches, leaves, and roots of trees. Biomass is a key indicator of how much carbon is being stored in forests, since trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in their tissues. Tracking biomass helps scientists better understand carbon fluxes, assess the impact of deforestation and forest degradation, and improve climate change models. This information also supports international agreements aimed at reducing carbon emissions, such as the Paris Agreement.
“These first images are nothing short of spectacular — and they’re only a mere glimpse of what is still to come,” said Michael Fehringer, ESA’s Biomass Project Manager. “As is routine, we’re still in the commissioning phase, fine-tuning the satellite to ensure it delivers the highest quality data for scientists to accurately determine how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests.”
ESA leaders celebrated the achievement and the collaborative effort behind the mission. “It was extremely emotional because it was the work of hundreds of people,” said Simonetta Cheli, ESA’s Director of Earth Observation Programmes, in an interview with Space.com. “It’s very symbolic of the effort behind the scenes and the potential that this mission has.”
ESA image of the Bolivian landscape at the Beni River in the rainforest. (Image credit: ESA)
One of the first images captures a vibrant region in Bolivia, where rainforest blends into riverine floodplains. This area has experienced extensive deforestation driven largely by agricultural expansion. In the false-color image, green represents rainforest, red indicates forested wetlands and floodplains, and blue-purple highlights grasslands. Cutting through the terrain is the dark, snaking line of the Beni River, one of the last major undammed rivers in the region. “It shows the beauty of our Earth and what we can do to protect it,” Cheli said during a press conference at the Vienna symposium.
A comparison of the same Bolivian region, imaged by both Biomass and Copernicus Sentinel-2, underscores the mission’s unique capabilities. While Sentinel-2 offers natural-color imagery of surface features, Biomass uses P-band radar to penetrate the canopy and reveal the forest’s vertical structure—essential for accurately measuring biomass and carbon content.
A side-by-side comparison of the Bolivian landscape reveals one image captured by the Sentinel-2 satellite and the other by ESA’s Biomass mission. (Image credit: ESA)
Other early images further showcase the satellite’s global reach and scientific potential. Over northern Brazil, Biomass recorded its first image, highlighting diverse Amazonian terrain. Red and pink shades mark wetlands and floodplains, while green depicts denser, higher forests to the north. This level of detail offers new ways to monitor forest health in some of the world’s most ecologically vital and remote regions.
In Indonesia, an image of the mountainous Halmahera rainforest captures the rugged topography shaped by volcanic activity, including the still-active Mount Gamkonora. Despite the dense vegetation, Biomass can reveal subsurface features such as volcanic slopes and forest floor contours, demonstrating its value for both ecological and geological studies.
The first image captured by Biomass. was the Amazon rainforest in northern Brazil (Image credit: ESA)
permalink
Halmahera rainforest in Indonesia showing the mountains and biomass. (Image credit: ESA)
From Africa’s Congo Basin, the satellite offers a view of Gabon, where the Ivindo River winds through pristine rainforest. The radar imagery brings clarity to one of the most carbon-dense forest regions in the world, aiding conservation efforts in a region under increasing pressure.
In a striking contrast, an image of the Sahara Desert in Chad reveals hidden ancient riverbeds and geological features beneath the sand. Biomass’s radar can see up to five meters below the desert surface, opening new frontiers in understanding past climates and identifying groundwater resources in arid environments like the Tibesti Mountains region.
The mission also reaches into polar extremes. A view of Antarctica’s Nimrod Glacier, alongside the Transantarctic Mountains, showcases how Biomass can peer into the ice itself—providing insights into internal glacial structures and movement. This could prove vital for tracking ice sheet stability and predicting future sea-level rise.
The biomass view of the Nimrod Glacier in Antarctica (Image credit: ESA)
While these initial images are still undergoing calibration and are not yet ready for scientific analysis, they confirm that the satellite is functioning as intended—and potentially exceeding expectations. With a planned five-year mission, Biomass will provide regular, global forest coverage, offering vital data for climate research, conservation planning, and international carbon accounting.
As the satellite moves into full operations, scientists anticipate a flood of high-quality data that could reshape how we observe and protect Earth’s ecosystems—especially its forests, which remain among the planet’s most critical carbon sinks.
In other cases, another member of the system will go on to form a second white dwarf. If gravitational instabilities bring these two objects together, then their collision will create a single object with a much higher mass. This will also restart fusion, leading to an explosion.
We have found evidence for both of these events happening. However, there are some questions about whether they happen often enough to explain the frequency of type Ia supernovae that we see. Both mechanisms require stars of sufficient mass orbiting within a reasonably close distance for either mass transfer or a collision to occur. So, astronomers have been considering other ways of blowing up a white dwarf.
The most promising option appears to be a double detonation. This can also require the transfer of some helium-rich material from another companion, but it can also occur if the white dwarf ends up with some unfused helium left on its surface. Regardless of how it ends up there, the helium can start fusing if enough of it pools up, or simply if its movement causes a sufficiently high local density in one region. However it happens, once fusion starts, the entire surface of the white dwarf will quickly follow, creating detonation number one.
That in turn will create compression in the carbon-oxygen portion of the white dwarf, pushing it past the density needed for that to start fusing. Once again, the initiation of fusion heats and compresses nearby material, creating a chain reaction that triggers widespread fusion in the white dwarf, blowing it to pieces as part of detonation two.
A shell game
The key thing about this is that it allows the explosion of white dwarfs before they reach a mass sufficient enough to trigger the fusion of their carbon and oxygen. Instead, it can potentially happen any time enough helium gathers on their surface. A double-detonation event would also be very difficult to detect, as the explosions would happen in rapid succession, and the environment in the immediate surroundings of a type Ia supernova is going to be complex and difficult to resolve.
It’s officially summer, and with that comes the first full moon of the season. July’s full moon — known as the Buck Moon or the Thunder Moon — will light up the night sky on July 10 and be at its fullest going into July 11, reaching peak luminosity at around 4:37 a.m. local time, which is a bit late, but it’ll still be bright for the whole night.
According to Stellarium’s sky map, the moon will rise from the southeastern horizon just after sunset in your local time and streak across the sky before setting on the southwestern horizon just before dawn. No matter where you are in the US, you’ll be able to see it virtually all night.
Should you not be able to see the moon due to weather or some other reason, you can also soak up a great view anytime from July 8-12 as the moon will be more than 95% full during those days.
Why is it called the Buck Moon or Thunder Moon?
According to The Farmer’s Almanac, July’s full moon actually has several names, including Buck Moon, Thunder Moon, Feather Moulting Moon, and Salmon Moon. These names typically come from Native American and colonial times and were used to describe the moon for the entire month, not just when it’s full.
White-tailed deer start growing antlers in March or April as the days start to lengthen. July marks the peak of their antler growth season, hence the name Buck Moon. Thunderstorms are also common in July, which is why it’s also called the Thunder Moon.
The other two names are less common, but July marks the time when some species of salmon begin migrating for the mating season, while ducks engage in their annual molting around this time of year as well.
Catch a glimpse of Mars and Venus, too
The moon will be joined in the sky by Mars and Venus during its trip across the sky on July 10. Mars will be visible just after sunset in the western sky before setting. You won’t have long, since it’s scheduled to dip below the horizon before midnight. If you choose to stay up late, Venus will crest the eastern horizon shortly after 2 a.m. local time and be visible until sunrise.
Saturn will also be visible in the eastern sky, not far from the moon, but you’ll likely need binoculars or a telescope to see it with the moon’s glow.
Once the moon finishes its monthly cycle, skygazers can check out the Alpha Capricornids and Southern Delta Aquariids meteor showers, both of which are scheduled to peak during the last few days of July.
Neanderthals were running a potentially lifesaving “fat factory” around 125,000 years ago in what is now Germany, a new study finds.
The research, published Wednesday (July 2) in the journal Science, reveals that these archaic human relatives had a process for extracting grease from animal bones — and it may have saved them from a lethal condition.
The condition, known as protein poisoning or rabbit starvation, happens when humans eat too much protein and don’t get enough fat or carbohydrates. Neanderthals would have likely been at high risk of protein poisoning, as they largely ate meat.
The “fat factory” discovery suggests that hominins, or humans and our close relatives, were practicing resource intensification — getting more utility out of the materials they had available — much earlier than previously thought. Before this analysis, the earliest evidence for resource intensification dated to 28,000 years ago, long after the Neanderthals’ extinction, according to the study.
Scientists found the Paleolithic factory after uncovering the fragmented remains of 172 large animals, including horses, deer and cattle, as well as Neanderthal-made anvils and hammerstones. After analyzing the bones, the team found that Neanderthals had first smashed the bones to get to the marrow — a soft, edible tissue inside of some bones — before boiling them to extract the fat. It appears that Neanderthals ate both the marrow and the fat, which would have maximized the amount of food and nutrients they got from an animal carcass.
“It’s surprisingly creative and innovative behavior from Neanderthals,” Osbjorn Pearson, an archaeologist at The University of New Mexico who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
Related: 10 fascinating discoveries about Neanderthals in 2024, from ‘Thorin’ the last Neanderthal to an ancient glue factory
Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.
Who were the Neanderthals?
Neanderthals, the closest extinct relative of modern humans, emerged around 400,000 years ago and went extinct around 34,000 years ago. Remains of the archaic humans were first discovered in the 19th century, and much of the archaeological evidence revealed since then suggests that Neanderthals were fairly sophisticated. They made tools, glue factories and possibly even art.
While it was known that Neanderthals largely ate meat, little was known about how Neanderthals prepared animal carcasses.
“We know a lot about Neanderthal hunting tactics, habits and consumption of meat and bone marrow … but to much lesser degree about all the processes after hunting and butchering,” study first author Lutz Kindler, an archaeologist at the Monrepos Archaeological Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution in Germany, told Live Science in an email.
“Labour-intensive and time-consuming”
Archaeologists found 2,000 bone fragments at Neumark-Nord, an archaeological site in central Germany, that had been crushed to facilitate the grease extraction.
“Fragmentation of the bones of large mammals into such a vast amount of small fragments is labour-intensive and time-consuming,” so it’s clear they served a purpose, study co-author Wil Roebroeks, a professor emeritus of paleolithic archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands, told Live Science in an email. In addition to bearing signs of being boiled, the bones are mostly broken near areas that contain the most fat, which supports the idea that the grease was rendered for consumption.
Neanderthals first crushed the bones to extract marrow and then chopped them into small pieces to facilitate rendering. (Image credit: Kindler, LEIZA-Monrepos)
Neanderthals might have eaten the fat out of necessity, Pearson said. They sometimes experienced periods of starvation and may have been desperate for sources of calories. “And it turns out that fat is just packed with calories,” he said — fat supplies more than twice the calories per gram as carbohydrates and protein do.
The bones also suggest that these archaic humans may have used some form of food storage, Roebroeks said. Neanderthals may have been “more similar to historically documented foragers” than previous research had suggested, he added.
Kindler noted the overlaps between the revealed Neanderthal practice and modern human behavior. “The archaeological science of studying hominids is about finding the similarities between us today and them in the past,” he said.
Understanding what Neanderthals ate and how they acquired it may improve our understanding of human adaptations, Roebroeks said. The extra calories provided by bone-derived grease has been vital to human evolution, as more robust diets can lengthen lifespan and lead to increased reproduction.
Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have imaged SNR 0509-67.5, a very young (300-350 years old) remnant of Type Ia supernova, and spotted patterns that confirm its star suffered a pair of explosive blasts.
This image, taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the supernova remnant SNR 0509-67.5 — the expanding remains of a star that exploded hundreds of years ago in a double-detonation. Calcium is shown in blue, and it is arranged in two concentric shells. These two layers indicate that the star exploded with a double-detonation. Image credit: ESO / Das et al. / Noll et al.
“White dwarfs — the small, inactive cores left over after stars like our Sun burn out their nuclear fuel — can produce what astronomers call a Type Ia supernova,” said Priyam Das, a Ph.D. student at the University of New South Wales Canberra.
“Much of our knowledge of how the Universe expands rests on these supernovae, and they are also the primary source of iron on our planet, including the iron in our blood.”
“Yet, despite their importance, the long-standing puzzle of the exact mechanism triggering their explosion remains unsolved.”
All models that explain Type Ia supernovae begin with a white dwarf in a pair of stars.
If it orbits close enough to the other star in this pair, the dwarf can steal material from its partner.
In the most established theory behind Type Ia supernovae, the white dwarf accumulates matter from its companion until it reaches a critical mass, at which point it undergoes a single explosion.
However, recent studies have hinted that at least some Type Ia supernovae could be better explained by a double explosion triggered before the star reached this critical mass.
The new VLT image of SNR 0509-67.5 proves their hunch was right: at least some Type Ia supernovae explode through a ‘double-detonation’ mechanism instead.
In this alternative model, the white dwarf forms a blanket of stolen helium around itself, which can become unstable and ignite.
This first explosion generates a shockwave that travels around the white dwarf and inwards, triggering a second detonation in the core of the star — ultimately creating the supernova.
Until now, there had been no clear, visual evidence of a white dwarf undergoing a double detonation.
Recently, astronomers have predicted that this process would create a distinctive pattern or fingerprint in the supernova’s still-glowing remains, visible long after the initial explosion.
Research suggests that remnants of such a supernova would contain two separate shells of calcium.
Das and colleagues found this fingerprint in a supernova’s remains.
“The results show a clear indication that white dwarfs can explode well before they reach the famous Chandrasekhar mass limit, and that the ‘double-detonation’ mechanism does indeed occur in nature,” said Dr. Ivo Seitenzahl, an astronomer at Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies.
The astronomers were able to detect these calcium layers in SNR 0509-67.5 by observing it with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on VLT.
This provides strong evidence that a Type Ia supernova can occur before its parent white dwarf reaches a critical mass.
“This tangible evidence of a double-detonation not only contributes towards solving a long-standing mystery, but also offers a visual spectacle,” Das said.
“Revealing the inner workings of such a spectacular cosmic explosion is incredibly rewarding.”
The team’s results appear today in the journal Nature Astronomy.
_____
P. Das et al. Calcium in a supernova remnant as a fingerprint of a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass explosion. Nat Astron, published online July 2, 2025; doi: 10.1038/s41550-025-02589-5
The knotty sea spider, Pycnogonum litorale, is not actually a spider, but it does represent a significant early branch in the genetic family tree that includes spiders, as well as scorpions, ticks and horseshoe crabs. That makes it “an important reference for the evolution of all these species,” says UW–Madison researcher Prashant Sharma. Photo courtesy of Prashant Sharma
It’s not easy to look at a sea spider and see an animal so representative of its kind that it may help scientists sort out the evolution of almost everything with eight legs. But that’s the potential a new study finds in these spindly, strikingly strange bottom-dwellers.
After all, once you’re done counting the legs, you quickly run out of resemblances between the 1,300-some known species of sea spider and their relatives like actual spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites and horseshoe crabs.
Sea spiders breathe through their skin, moving oxygen around their body using a kind of peristalsis (muscle contractions similar to how you squeeze food down your throat). When it’s time to make babies, the males cement the fertilized eggs onto themselves and carry them around on their bodies until they hatch. There isn’t even much body to speak of, because sea spiders look like plumbing schematics. They’re all tubes, mostly because they have no abdomen — that back end that bears the scorpion’s stinger, that stores all that blood in a well-fed tick, and that gives tarantulas their bulbous, hairy mass.
“They’re weird,” says Prashant Sharma, a researcher who specializes in that sort of thing. His University of Wisconsin–Madison lab is intermittently stocked with blind arachnids that live only in a handful of Eastern Mediterranean caves, scorpion-shaped vinegaroons that spray acid from their butts, and daddy longlegs that have … short legs.
“Sea spiders are just incredibly cool and understudied animals. So, that’s what draws us to them,” Sharma adds.
That interest has revealed a more scientific reason to be drawn to sea spiders. They are a useful anchor for the genetics of the chelicerates, a group that includes all of the charismatic and consequential, many-legged animals mentioned above.
Sharma, a UW–Madison professor of integrative biology, studies the evolution of chelicerates, digging deep into their genes to understand better how their varied, intricate bodies have developed. He’s studied how and when they picked up tricks like venom and shown that the horseshoe crab belongs to this cohort just as much as the house spider.
What many of his animal subjects have had in common over the years is a twist in their evolution that strikes geneticists as a bit of an advantage: free DNA real estate. Somewhere along their line, they went through a process called whole-genome duplication.
“There are a few mechanisms for whole-genome duplication,” Sharma says, including a misstep in cell division or combining genomes with a close relative. “But the result is a species getting an extra copy of all of its chromosomes. You can look at all those extra genes as more places where new traits, new functions could develop.”
Sharma and collaborators — including former lab members Siddharth Kulkarni and Emily Setton, and scientists at the Arctic University of Norway — published the first high-quality genome of a sea spider species today in the journal BMC Biology. The work was spearheaded by their colleagues at the University of Vienna, most notably Georg Brenneis, one of the very few people on the planet working on sea spider development.
The study centers on the knotty sea spider, Pycnogonum litorale, which is widespread on rocky sea beds across the North Atlantic Ocean and looks a lot like a tiny, tangled ginger root. The researchers found that this specific sea spider has never experienced whole-genome duplication.
Because whole genomes, once duplicated, tend to keep traces of that doubling of genes, this places P. litorale somewhere near the base of the entire chelicerate family tree relative to all those branches that include species with duplicated genomes. It’s a steady point to which scientists can trace back the progression of variation across modern spiders and related species.
“They are an important reference for the evolution of all these species, which include some of the most significant agricultural pests, like mites, and vectors for human disease, like ticks,” says Sharma, whose work is supported by the National Science Foundation.
Sea spiders like this Endeis spinosa have no abdomen, so they’ve tucked many organs, such as stomachs, into their substantial legs. Researchers think they’ve discovered why.
The researchers also may have uncovered the reason sea spiders have no abdomen. They are missing a gene, handily called “Abdominal-A,” from a group of genes called the Hox cluster known for its importance to organizing body parts. As a result, sea spiders have stuffed all the usual contents of an abdomen — stomachs, reproductive organs, the stuff they use to breathe — into their legs.
Weirder still, there are fossil sea spiders from tens and hundreds of millions of years ago that do sport an abdomen.
“We don’t know quite when that structure was lost. We know they started out looking more like modern arthropods,” says Sharma, referring to the wider group of animals with exoskeletons and segmented bodies, including beetles and crustaceans and bees and his chelicerates. “And then, at some point, they just went totally bizarre. So weird.”
This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (IOS-2016141).
Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison drives innovation, saves lives, creates jobs, supports small businesses, and fuels the industries that keep America competitive and secure. It makes the U.S. — and Wisconsin — stronger. Federal funding for research is a high-return investment that’s worth fighting for. Learn more about the impact of UW–Madison’s federally funded research and how you can help protect it.
