The temperature on the nightsides of short-period gas giants (hot Jupiters) is surprisingly uniform, suggesting the dark sides of these exoplanets have...
Astronomers using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) have spotted propadiene — a colorless, flammable gas, best known as a fuel for specialized...
An international team of astronomers has managed to peer deep into the Jovian atmosphere using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)...
A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Texas Austin has used a new technique to analyze tiny amounts of gas...
LHS 3844b, a 1.3-Earth-radii terrestrial world in an 11-hour orbit around the small nearby star LHS 3844, very likely has little to no atmosphere and could...
A new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has ruled out the possibility that the levels of methane detected in the Martian atmosphere could...
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope obtained a detailed image of Jupiter on June 27, 2019, when the gas giant was approximately 400 million miles (644...
Astronomers are curious about the two recently-discovered classes of planets not found in the Solar System: the so-called super-Earths and sub-Neptunes,...
NASA announced last week that it had selected the Dragonfly mission to explore the prebiotic organic chemistry and look for signs of life on Titan, the...
The Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) tunable laser spectrometer onboard Curiosity last week detected surprisingly high levels of the gas methane at Gale Crater:...
Planetary scientists have long observed water-ice clouds in the Martian middle atmosphere (18.6-37.2 miles, or 30-60 km, above the surface). Now, a University...
Between 8 and 2 million years ago, cosmic-ray energy from one or more nearby supernovae reached Earth and pummeled the planet’s atmosphere, initiating...
In the lab, scientists have pinpointed a specific wavelength of infrared light absorbed when molecules of carbon monoxide and nitrogen join together and...
Planetary researchers from NASA’s Juno mission made the first detection beyond Earth of an internal magnetic field that changes over time — a phenomenon...
STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) is a thin ribbon of pinkish-red or mauve-colored light stretching from east to west, farther south...
The tenuous nitrogen atmosphere of the dwarf planet Pluto is predicted to ultimately collapse and freeze over.
This high-resolution image of Pluto was...
A meteor seen over the South Pacific, off the northern coast of Papua New Guinea, in 2014 likely came from interstellar space, according to new research...
New observations with the Subaru Telescope, a Japanese 8-m telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, show that aurorae at Jupiter’s poles are heating the atmosphere...
From the ground, the dance of the northern lights, or aurora borealis, can look peaceful. But those shimmering sheets of colored lights are the product...
