Astronomy and planetary science articles from across Nature Portfolio

Magmatic rocks from the far side of the Moon might not originate from the lunar mantle, but from the mineral cumulates resulting from the crystallization of a magma pond formed by the South Pole–Aitken impact on the far side of the Moon.

Coordinated observations between the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes of a star that is an analogue of the young Sun have uncovered multi-temperature signatures of stellar coronal mass ejections. The detection of fast–warm and slow–cool plasma components suggests a solar-like but more complex picture of stellar eruptions, with impact on the planets around young stars.

Crop prices correlate with an 11-year solar period, and a meteor detonates over Ireland, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.

Nanometre to micrometre-sized magnetite crystals in soil samples from the Chang’e-5 mission are associated with pentlandite grains which suggests sequential crystallization within impact induced melts, according to high-resolution microscopy observations

Cunshi Wang and colleagues report StarWhisper Telescope system, an AI agent to control amateur telescope array to make astronomical observations of cosmic transients. The agent is a blueprint for control systems of future telescope arrays where AI-based autonomy will be critical.

Functional proteins involved in methanogenesis and organic matter degradation in a natural gas well are from commonly identified groups of residential metagenome-assembled genomes, according to a metaproteomic, metagenomic, and geochemical analyses of Antrim Shale well water, Michigan, USA.

General-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations coupled with general-relativistic radiation transfer of a wide class of black hole spacetimes forecast the ability of future VLBI projects to distinguish between black hole images.

Analyses performed on the Ryugu and Bennu samples from the centimetre down to the sub-millimetre scale reveal that they share most near-IR spectral properties, implying similar initial material and evolution processes, yet not strictly identical.

An extreme flare has been seen from a supermassive black hole at redshift z = 2.6. First detected in 2018, it is 30 times brighter than similar events. The most likely cause is the shredding of a star of 30 solar masses or more.

First image from Vera C. Rubin telescope reveals a previously unnoticed feature of galaxy M61 that may explain its mysterious properties.

Magmatic rocks from the far side of the Moon might not originate from the lunar mantle, but from the mineral cumulates resulting from the crystallization of a magma pond formed by the South Pole–Aitken impact on the far side of the Moon.

Dimming of the starlight from RZ Piscium reveals that 24 unseen bodies are whizzing around the star.

Coordinated observations between the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes of a star that is an analogue of the young Sun have uncovered multi-temperature signatures of stellar coronal mass ejections. The detection of fast–warm and slow–cool plasma components suggests a solar-like but more complex picture of stellar eruptions, with impact on the planets around young stars.

Crop prices correlate with an 11-year solar period, and a meteor detonates over Ireland, in this week’s pick from the Nature archive.

A ‘superflare’ 10 trillion times brighter than the Sun is confirmed as the record-holder for luminosity.