Astronomy

Michael Sori, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, used careful mathematical calculations to determine the density of Mercury’s crust, which is thinner than anyone thought.

Visible only because it is magnified by the gravity of a massive galaxy cluster, Icarus is 9 billion light-years away from Earth, making it the farthest individual star ever seen.

The HOSTS Survey is helping to determine how big future telescopes should be, which stars are candidates for harboring Earth-like planets and what the average star system looks like.

Astronomer Vishnu Reddy and aerospace engineering graduate student Tanner Campbell are following the path of Tiangong-1, using technology they developed in only four months.

A small, aging telescope — the Bok Telescope on Kitt Peak — can still do mighty science, even helping astrophysicists undertake a virtual journey to the center of a dead star.

A worldwide collaboration will work on ways of processing unprecedented amounts of data in real time, with a primary goal of assisting the effort to take the first-ever pictures of a black hole. However, applications eventually could include self-driving cars, renewable energy and national defense.

After the successful test launch of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, the UA's Catalina Sky Survey tracked the rocket's payload to help determine the Tesla's course around the sun.

UA professor Vishnu Reddy is leading a NASA-funded project to find freshly fallen meteorites, using radar data and computer models to locate them within hours of their landing.

Revealed by the UA-led HiRISE camera, sheets of water ice beneath the surface on Mars hold clues to the planet's climate history — and might yield drinking water for future astronauts.

A four-year effort involving Kitt Peak's Bok Telescope and UA students helped a team of astronomers measure the masses of a large sample of supermassive black holes. Despite its modest size and advanced age of almost 50 years, the instrument keeps churning out big science.