News at a glance: Webb telescope dinged, U.S.-Russia research paused, and NASA ’s UFO study

Table of contents A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 376, Issue 6599. Download PDF ASTRONOMY Star mapper provides Milky Way portrait he European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite has now mapped almost 2 billion of the Milky Way’s stars, logging their positions, speeds, temperatures, and other parameters—and allowing astronomers to chart the Galaxy’s structure and evolution. Last week, operators released the third major trove of data, including lists of 800,000 binary stars, 10 million variable stars, and, within the Solar System, 156,000 asteroids and rocky bodies. Launched in 2013, Gaia has already uncovered new nearby satellite galaxies, fast-moving stars escaping the Milky Way, and evidence of past galaxies that merged with ours. The new data show thousands of stars are convulsed by giant, violent waves. And, for the first time, the data also include spectra—breakdowns of starlight—that point to chemical compositions. Stars forge heavier elements and disperse them when they explode; the elements are taken up by subsequent generations of stars. Mapping that information shows the abundance of heavy elements is highest in the Galaxy’s central disk, where stars live fast and die young. ASTRONOMY Dust grain hits Webb space telescope One mirror segment of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was struck by a micrometeoroid last...
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