NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is in the process of dropping into its final, lowest-ever orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, allowing it to make repeated passes within 50 kilometres (30 miles) of the surface.
Two colliding galaxies 100 million light years away give astronomers a ringside seat to witness bursts of star formation as vast clouds of gas and dust interact, triggering the creation of thousands of star clusters surrounding two galactic cores that are slowly merging.
Colliding neutron stars generated headlines last year after the detection of gravitational waves sweeping through the solar system. Follow-on X-ray observations indicate the cataclysmic merger formed a record low-mass black hole.
