As the data being transmitted by the New Horizons space probe continues to flow back to Earth, scientists poring over the information continue to find new surprises, including possible evidence that Pluto has a subsurface ocean of liquid water. Scans of the western lobe of the dwarf planet’s "heart" show that, for some unknown reason, there is extra mass in the region. This came as a surprise to the researchers: the area, dubbed Sputnik Planum, is thought to have been formed by a meteor impact, meaning that it should have negative mass, as one would assume from an impact crater.
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NASA has announced that it has found evidence of water plumes erupting from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, hinting that the Jovian moon’s subsurface oceans — oceans that scientists consider to be a good candidate as a host for extraterrestrial life — may be more accessible than what was once thought.
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The increasing use of satellite imagery to analyze the surface of the Earth has opened the benefits of orbital imaging technology to fields of study that previously would not have been imagined. Formerly the purview of spy surveillance and meteorologists, satellite imaging is now helping archaeologists look for new places to explore in the landscape, searching for large-scale or subtle patterns that would otherwise have been invisible to a researcher on the ground.
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Astronomers have discovered something strange about an ultra-diffuse galaxy in the Coma Cluster called Dragonfly 44. It went largely overlooked by astronomers until recently, due to it only emitting 1 percent of the light that the Milky Way does, hence its "ultra diffuse" status. But Dragonfly 44 has recently been found to be nearly the same mass as our own galaxy, due to being made nearly entirely of dark matter.
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