January 2026 News and research papers
Edwin Rod
January 2026 News and research papers
Hi everyone
STARDATE 2026(Friday 13 – Saturday the 14 March)
STARDATE26 is confirmed at both Star Safari and the Rangatahi Hub with a sneak preview for one of the speakers – building and restoring old telescopes.
Tom Love
Tom is an amateur astronomer who started out with the local astronomical society in Dunedin and later worked as the first observer on the MOA microlensing project at Mount John in the 1990s. Returning to astronomy in recent years he works with amateurs and professionals to observe a range of objects spectroscopically, and is involved with research projects on pulsating stars, novae and eclipsing binary systems. He is a part time research student in astronomy at the University of Southern Queensland
Some interesting news and papers on Europa out this month.
Research papers
Europa’s ice thickness and subsurface structure characterized by the Juno microwave radiometer
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02718-0
Exploring Salt-driven Viscous Surface Convergence in Europa’s Icy Shell
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ae2b6f
The Pandora SmallSat
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09730
Interesting look at Europa
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-67151-3
Revealing Callisto's Near Subsurface Thermophysical Properties
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.15850
The Dependence of Earth Milankovitch Cycles on Martian Mass
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/ae2800
Dearth of Photosynthetically Active Radiation Suggests No Complex Life on Late M-Star Exoplanets
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02548
Two temperate Earth- and Neptune-sized planets orbiting fully convective M dwarfs
https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stag070/8424240?login=false
Onset of summer aridification and the decline of Homo floresiensis at Liang Bua 61,000 years ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02961-3
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Interesting News items
NASA’s Juno Measures Thickness of Europa’s Ice Shell
https://www.nasa.gov/missions/juno/nasas-juno-measures-thickness-of-europas-ice-shell/
Two New Exoplanets And The Need For New Habitable Zone Definitions
Raccoons studying their clever brains can clarify human intelligence, too
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