Dwarf Planets Sedna and Pluto Reveal Mass Secrets Through Chemical Differences, While Euclid's Data Unveils Hundreds of Thousands of Galaxies

Recent studies highlight new insights into the masses and compositions of dwarf planets Sedna and Pluto, located in the Kuiper Belt. Observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) indicate that while Pluto contains both methane and ethane on its surface, Sedna only has methane. Scientists hypothesize that Sedna's weaker gravity allows methane to escape over billions of years, leading to a revised minimum mass estimate for Sedna. This understanding aids in planning future missions and interpreting surface changes in distant solar system bodies. Separately, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Euclid mission has released its first data, showcasing hundreds of thousands of galaxies. This release includes a classification survey of over 380,000 galaxies and 500 gravitational lens candidates, identified using both AI and human analysis. Euclid's survey covers a significant portion of the sky, promising discoveries about galaxy shapes, star formation, and the evolution of the universe.