Shoot for the moon that shoots back

Scientists may have found an elusive medium-size black hole. A new study suggests an object in the Andromeda galaxy (pictured) thought to be a collection of stars is actually a black hole about 100,000 solar masses. “We have very good detections of the biggest, stellar-mass black holes up to 100 times the size of our sun, and supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies that are millions of times the size of our sun, but there aren't any measurements of black holes between these,” said senior author Anil Seth, associate professor of astronomy at the University of Utah and co-author of the study. “That’s a large gap. This discovery fills that gap.” Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

JWST has reached its new home in space. On Jan. 24, the telescope arrived in orbit around L2, where the Sun and Earth’s gravity balance out in a way that allows JWST to keep the Sun, Earth, and Moon at its back while it observes the cosmos. It made its journey of 1.5 million kilometers (932,000 miles) more efficiently than expected, leaving it enough fuel to remain at L2 for 20 years — twice as long as originally planned. We’ll still have to wait several months for science images, but for now, we’re happy to see the telescope arrived safe and sound.

NASA’s Curiosity rover collected some interesting Martian samples. A new study found that several of the powdered rock samples contained a kind of carbon associated with life processes on Earth. Scientists on the study said it’s hard to know what this could mean in the search for life, given that Earth and Mars differ enormously.

Enceladus is one of Saturn’s most fascinating moons. Its south polar “tiger stripes” (pictured in infrared) have warmer surface temperatures where subsurface water vents through the icy crust, creating the plumes we see in images like this week’s Space Snapshot. New research suggests that this water may be coming from shallow pockets of water, not the ocean deep below the icy crust. The scientists who conducted this research join this week’s Planetary Radio to talk about their findings and what it all could mean for the search for life beyond Earth. Image credit: NASA et al.

What goes up must come down, and Enceladus makes no exception. As you read above, Saturn’s rings collect some of the water that shoots up through cracks in the icy moon’s crust, but some of it also falls back to the surface as snow. Some water even makes it off-moon, falling as snow on the neighboring moons Mimas and Tethys. Enceladus isn’t the only place you’ll find extraterrestrial snow. The latest article from Planetary Society editor Rae Paoletta takes a wintery tour through the snowy worlds of the solar system.

Believe it or not, Venus is one of these snowy worlds. But as you might expect, the solar system’s hottest planet doesn’t have the kind of snow we’re used to. This is just one of the many surprises Venus has up its sleeve. Japan’s Akatsuki spacecraft is the only probe currently orbiting Venus, but more missions are in development.