The universe dished up a host of exciting new discoveries this week. From a shadow on Saturn's rings to a murky baby star, you will be dazzled by all that space has to offer.
Hubble archives revealed a moon orbiting 2007 OR10, the third-largest dwarf planet in our solar system. Located in the icy Kuiper Belt, astronomers were first tipped off by the possible presence of a moon due to 2007 OR1's slow rotation. Formed long ago, such moons suggest that the region was once more crowded, with frequent collisions between celestial bodies.
Elsewhere in space, an image taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array captured a newborn star in the Orion Nebula called HH 212. At 40,000 years old and surrounded by gas, the star could have a lifespan of 100 billion years. Eventually, gravity may cause all the gas and dust to cave into a dense core, becoming a protostar. What's left begins to orbit around the infant star, sometimes forming planets.
And finally, the International Space Station ejected more than two dozen CubeSat satellites over Earth this week. The shoebox-sized satellites will spend two years studying Earth's upper atmosphere and interstellar radiation from the Big Bang, discovering even more about our planet in the process.
Want to see more moons, star formation, and satellies? Check out the whole collection here.
