Both magazines and the Internet are excellent sources for recent astronomy articles.  New photos of space objects result in articles.  New space missions result in articles.  Every new discovery and piece of information generates a tremendous amount of discussion.  This article relates a few of them.

Something as simple as bumpy space dust generated a great deal of interest and a lot of the recent astronomy articles.  Why is this important?  Scientists have long known that hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.  However, larger molecules require that hydrogen bonds.  Because of the cold in space, hydrogen needs a little push.  Bumpy molecules provide that medium, so now scientists have verified a theory on how hydrogen forms molecules in space.  Nobody thinks of dust being bumpy when they vacuum.

One of Saturn’s moons is called the “Death Star.”  With its huge crater, it resembles the famous movie prop.  In August 2008 it became a subject of many recent astronomy articles when the Cassini spacecraft passed near the moon, Mimas.  We gained a lot of compelling data from this mission, including stunning images.  Folks loved to see this news.  One hope scientists have is that this new data will reveal information about the number of crater creating objects fly through the Saturn system.  This can give new insight into how busy our solar system is as far as impact capable objects, as well as reveal the true extent of how other planets, like Saturn, serve as object scrubbers in our solar system.

It’s long been known that dark matter exists in the universe.  It contributes to the expansion of the universe, but scientists don’t really know how.  In 2008 a number of the recent astronomy articles were dedicated to the search for and analysis of dark matter.  The SuperNova Acceleration Probe was set to study dark matter.  It’s important because about 70% of the stuff in the universe is dark matter.

Before becoming a sun, our little yellow sun was just a proto-sun.  Many researchers, however wondered whether this proto-sun may have emitted useful heat or light or particles.  Yes it did, says recent astronomy articles.  New techniques have revealed that the proto-sun had a particle rich solar wind along with light and heat.  These emissions helped form life on Earth even before the sun was a sun.

For any astronomy enthusiast it’s important to keep up on recent astronomy articles.

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