Tag Archive for 'Planet'

This Pluto mosaic was made from New Horizons LORRI images taken on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 49,700 miles (80,000 km). This view is projected from a point 1,118 miles (1,800 km) above Pluto’s equator, looking northeast over the dark, cratered Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth expanse of icy plains called Sputnik Planum. Pluto’s North Pole is off the image to the left. This mosaic was produced with panchromatic images from the New Horizons LORRI camera, with color overlaid from the Ralph color mapper onboard New Horizons. Image credit: S.A. Stern et al.

Researchers Say the Reason Pluto Lost Its Planet Status is Not Valid

Sep 10, 2018 by News Staff

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) established a definition of a planet that required it to clear its orbit, or in other words, be the...

Huge Northern Polar Vortex Spotted Forming in Saturn’s Stratosphere

Sep 5, 2018 by News Staff

When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, the gas giant’s southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the...

This image of the Great Red Spot was taken on July 10, 2017, as Juno performed its seventh close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was 8,648 miles (13,917 km) from the tops of the clouds of the planet. Image credit: NASA / SwRI / MSSS.

Scientists Find Water in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Sep 3, 2018 by News Staff

By looking from two ground-based telescopes at wavelengths sensitive to thermal radiation leaking from the depths of Jupiter’s mysterious, roiling storm...

Magnetic fields around Jupiter can overpower zonal jets that affect atmospheric circulation. Image credit: JAXA.

Magnetic Fields Impact Atmospheric Circulation of Gaseous Planets, Scientists Find

Aug 15, 2018 by News Staff

A team of researchers from the Australian National University and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has solved the mystery underlying Jupiter’s...

Exoplanet Hunters Create Reference Catalog of Solar System Bodies’ Light-Fingerprints

Aug 1, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers at Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, has produced a reference catalog of spectra and geometric albedos for 19 objects that...

An artist’s impression of a terraformed Mars. Image credit: Daein Ballard / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mars Terraforming is Not Possible Using Currently Available Technology, Researchers Say

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

On Mars, the atmospheric pressure is around 0.6% of Earth’s. Any liquid water on the surface would very quickly evaporate or freeze. One of the challenges...

Team Zopherus of Rogers is the first-place winner in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, Phase 3: Level 1 competition. Image credit: NASA.

NASA Awards Top Five Design Finalists in 3D Printed Martian Habitat Challenge

Jul 31, 2018 by News Staff

Future missions to Mars and beyond will require innovative options to shelter explorers. NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, a Centennial Challenges...

This image shows the recent observations of the planets Mars and Saturn made with Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / OPAL Team / J. DePasquale, STScI.

Mars and Saturn Photographed Near Opposition

Jul 27, 2018 by News Staff

In summer 2018 Mars and Saturn are, one after the other, in opposition to Earth. Around the time of opposition, a planet is at its closest distance to...

An artist’s impression of ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Mars Express Finds Huge Reservoir of Liquid Water below Martian Surface

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

ESA’s Mars Express orbiter has used radar signals bounced through underground layers of ice to find evidence of liquid water trapped below the south...

The surface of Europa looms large in this newly-reprocessed color view; image scale is 1.6 km per pixel; north on Europa is at right. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SETI Institute.

NASA Unveils Radiation Maps of Europa

Jul 25, 2018 by News Staff

Jupiter’s moon Europa is one of the most compelling targets in the search for life beyond Earth. However, its water-ice surface is affected by the harsh...

On Earth, the Northern and Southern lights occur when the solar wind (electrically charged particles from the Sun) follow our planet’s geomagnetic field lines to the poles and collide with the upper atmosphere. Mars lacks a global magnetic field, so instead the solar wind piles up in front of Mars in a bow shock, which blocks charged particles from reaching the bulk of the atmosphere. However, in a process first observed by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft, some solar wind protons can slip past the bow shock by first bonding with electrons from the Martian upper atmosphere to form hydrogen atoms. Because these hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, they can pass through the bow shock and go on to create an ultraviolet proton aurora on the dayside of Mars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Proton Aurora Discovered on Mars

Jul 24, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) spacecraft has found a new type of Martian aurora that occurs over much of the day side of the...

This close-up color image of a small-scale dust storm on Mars was acquired by the HRSC instrument on ESA’s Mars Express in April 2018. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter Spots Small-Scale Dust Storm

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new image from the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) aboard ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft shows a local dust storm with a towering cloud front,...

These images of Titan were created using 13 years of data acquired by Cassini’s VIMS instrument. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Nantes / University of Arizona.

NASA Releases Spectacular New Infrared Images of Titan

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

The newly-released series of images, made from data obtained by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA’s Cassini...

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars projected into point perspective, a view similar to that which one would see from a spacecraft. The distance is 1,550 miles (2,500 km) from the surface of the planet. The mosaic is composed of 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. The center of the scene shows the entire Valles Marineris canyon system, over 1,240 miles (2,000 km) long and up to 5 miles (8 km) deep, extending form Noctis Labyrinthus, the arcuate system of graben to the west, to the chaotic terrain to the east. Many huge ancient river channels begin from the chaotic terrain from north-central canyons and run north. The three Tharsis volcanoes (dark red spots), each about 15.5 miles (25 km) high, are visible to the west. South of Valles Marineris is very ancient terrain covered by many impact craters. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Mars’ Atmosphere Acts as Single, Interconnected System

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

A new study using data from the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft has...

This image of Neptune was obtained during the testing of the Narrow-Field adaptive optics mode of the MUSE/GALACSI instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. Image credit: ESO / P. Weilbacher, AIP.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Captures Sharp Images of Neptune

Jul 19, 2018 by News Staff

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has achieved the first light with a new adaptive optics mode...

Various groupings of Jupiter’s moons with the newly-discovered ones shown in bold; Valetudo has a prograde orbit that crosses the retrograde orbits. Image credit: Roberto Molar-Candanosa / Carnegie Institution for Science.

Astronomers Discover Twelve New Jovian Moons

Jul 18, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Dr. Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science has discovered twelve new moons orbiting Jupiter: eleven ‘normal’...

Sulaiman et al found a powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its rings and Enceladus. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Sounds of Saturn: Evidence of Communication between Saturn, Its Rings and Enceladus via Plasma Waves

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s high-inclination Grand Finale orbits offered an unprecedented new view of Saturn and its environment. New research from...

Nitrogen is most-commonly bonded with itself in diatomic N2 molecules; a new study confirms that it becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Image credit: Alexander Goncharov.

Extreme Pressures and Temperatures Turn Nitrogen Metallic

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

New research indicates that nitrogen, one of the most-common elements in the Universe and the dominant gas in the atmosphere of Earth, becomes a metallic...

Juno Images Show Unusual ‘Footprint’ of Io and Ganymede on Jupiter’s Aurorae

Jul 6, 2018 by News Staff

High-resolution infrared images from the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) on NASA’s Juno spacecraft show that, rather than casting one ‘shadow’...

Massive Protoplanet Hit Young Uranus, Caused It To Tilt, Study Says

Jul 3, 2018 by News Staff

According to a Durham University-led study, young Uranus was hit by a protoplanet about twice the size of Earth that caused the ice giant to tilt and could...

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