Tag Archive for Solar System

This image of the Sun was taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. Image credit: Auchère et al., doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202346039.

Solar Orbiter Captures Extreme-Ultraviolet Images of Sun’s Corona

Sep 6, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers have used the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft in a new mode of operation to observe...

A fragment of the Erg Chech 002 meteorite. Image credit: Steve Jurvetson / CC BY 2.0.

4.6-Billion-Year-Old Meteorite Provides New Insights into Early Solar Nebula

Aug 29, 2023 by News Staff

Scientists have determined a precise lead isotopic age of the andesitic achondrite meteorite Erg Chech 002. Their result, combined with published aluminum-26-magnesium-26...

Plasma is constantly streaming away from the Sun, forming the solar wind. A likely source of this plasma is coronal holes, regions of the Sun’s corona with magnetic field lines that open outward. Chitta et al. observed a coronal hole in the extreme ultraviolet using the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft and identified several types of small-scale jets within it. Large numbers of jets occurred during the observation, but each one lasted only a few dozen seconds. The authors calculated that the jets provide enough energy and plasma to supply a large fraction of the solar wind, at least during quiet periods. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Solar Orbiter Spots Tiny Jets Escaping from Outer Atmosphere of the Sun

Aug 28, 2023 by News Staff

Extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun obtained by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft have revealed...

This image from the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows Neptune; a dark spot can be seen to the upper-right. Image credit: ESO / Irwin et al.

VLT Observes Large Dark Spot and Its Bright Companion in Atmosphere of Neptune

Aug 24, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed a large dark spot in Neptune’s...

This oblique perspective view of Lycus Sulci and Yelwa Crater on Mars was generated from the digital terrain model and the nadir and color channels of the High Resolution Stereo Camera on ESA’s Mars Express. It shows the large 8-km-wide Yelwa Crater in the background, while the wrinkled terrain of Lycus Sulci dominates the foreground. These features lie on the edge of the ‘aureole’ of Olympus Mons. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Focuses on Surroundings of Olympus Mons Volcano

Aug 24, 2023 by News Staff

Lava flows on Olympus Mons probably melted ice in the ground, making the volcano flank unstable; rockfalls and landslides moved hundreds of km into the...

This sequence of Hubble images chronicles the waxing and waning of the amount of cloud cover on Neptune. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Erandi Chavez, UC Berkeley / Imke de Pater, UC Berkeley.

Astronomers Discover Connection between Neptune’s Cloudy Weather and 11-Year Solar Cycle

Aug 17, 2023 by News Staff

Neptune is the most distant planet in the Solar System, an ice-giant that boasts an active and chaotic atmosphere. Using archival near-infrared observations...

For most of the time, Saturn’s atmosphere looks hazy and featureless to the naked eye in contrast to Jupiter’s colorful and vibrant atmosphere. This picture changes when we look at Saturn using a radio eye. Despite bland looking at the visible wavelengths, different latitudes on Saturn show dramatic contrast in the radio emission. In 2015, Li et al. found substantial brightness temperature variations -- greater than the temperature increase caused by the 2010 storm -- as a function of latitude and radio wavelength based on spatially resolved radio images of Saturn, as obtained from the VLA. Via a spectral inversion study, they created a latitude-altitude map of ammonia concentration anomalies from these images and correlate the anomalies to the occurrences of past giant storms in the northern hemisphere. Image credit: S. Dagnello / NRAO / AUI / NSF / Li et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adg9419.

VLA Reveals Megastorm-Centric Disruptions in Saturnian Atmosphere

Aug 14, 2023 by News Staff

Planetary-scale giant storms erupt on Saturn periodically. There have been at least six recorded occurrences of past eruptions, and the most recent one...

The Mörigen arrowhead. Image credit: Thomas Schüpbach.

2,800-Year-Old Arrowhead Was Made of Meteoritic Iron, Archaeologists Say

Aug 11, 2023 by Natali Anderson

The detection of the cosmogenic isotope aluminum-26; the concentrations of nickel, cobalt, germanium and gallium; and the presence of two minerals called...

Polygonal ridges on Mars: (a) general view of bedrock surrounding the rover on sols 3,154 to 3,156 showing widespread polygonal ridges; (b) close-up showing ‘stepped’ exposure of polygons within large bedrock blocks; (c) view of bedrock with polygons and locations of ChemCam analysis on ridge (red rectangle) and APXS analysis on smooth host bedrock (dotted circle); (d) remote micro-image of cemented ridge with spots analyzed by ChemCam (reticles 1 to 5), highlighting details of nodular texture; (e, f) bedrock with polygonal pattern (e) and interpretative overlay (f) that shows prominent ridges (solid red lines), less certain ridges (dotted red lines) and cross-cutting later-stage Ca-sulfate-filled veins (white areas). Image credit: Rapin et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06220-3.

Early Mars Had a Sustained, Cyclic, Possibly Seasonal, Climate

Aug 10, 2023 by News Staff

New observations of mud cracks made by NASA’s Curiosity rover show that high-frequency, wet-dry cycling occurred in early Martian surface environments,...

An artist’s impression of the InSight lander on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Mars is Spinning Faster, Planetary Researchers Say

Aug 9, 2023 by News Staff

To track the Red Planet’s spin rate, planetary scientists relied on the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) onboard NASA’s InSight lander....

On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The CME traveled at over 900 miles per second. It did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow, causing aurora to appear on the night of September 3. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

HAWC Observatory Detects High-Energy Gamma Rays from the Sun

Aug 7, 2023 by News Staff

New results from the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) observatory extend the bright, hard gamma-ray emission from the solar disk observed with NASA’s...

A spectroscopic map of Ganymede derived from Webb measurements shows light absorption around the poles characteristic of hydrogen peroxide; the circle outlines the surfaces of the moon. Image credit: Samantha Trumbo, Cornell University.

Webb Detects Hydrogen Peroxide on Ganymede

Jul 30, 2023 by News Staff

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the only satellite in the Solar System known to have an intrinsic magnetic field. Interactions between this field and the...

This Hubble image of Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART mission. Dimorphos has a blue dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots surrounds the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid. Image credit: NASA / ESA / D. Jewitt, UCLA.

Hubble Spots Swarm of Boulders around Asteroid Dimorphos

Jul 24, 2023 by News Staff

On September 26, 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally slammed into the 160-m-wide asteroid moonlet Dimorphos — which...

Marchi et al. compared the early impact history of Venus and Earth, determining that Venus experienced higher-energy impacts creating a superheated core. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute.

Early, Energetic Collisions Could Have Fueled Venus Volcanism: Study

Jul 20, 2023 by News Staff

New research shows that long-lived volcanism, driven by early, energetic collisions on Venus, offers an explanation of its young surface age with stagnant-lid...

An artist’s representation of BepiColombo flying through precipitating electrons that can trigger X-ray auroras on the surface of Mercury. Image credit: Thibaut Roger / Europlanet.

Auroral Mechanisms May Be Universal throughout Our Solar System

Jul 18, 2023 by News Staff

An analysis of data obtained during the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo spacecraft’s first Mercury flyby reveals that Mercury’s southern magnetosphere aurorae...

An artist’s impression of the early Earth. Image credit: NASA.

Earth’s Day was a Constant 19.5 Hours for Almost 1.5 Billion Years, Study Says

Jul 13, 2023 by News Staff

New research from the University of Toronto shows that from approximately 2 billion until 600 million years ago, an atmospheric tide driven by the Sun...

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance on the surface of the Red Planet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Perseverance Finds Diverse Organic Molecules in Jezero Crater

Jul 12, 2023 by News Staff

The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) instrument onboard NASA’s Perseverance rover has...

This image, taken with ESA’s Solar Orbiter on April 1, 2022, shows a partial section of the Sun with gas at 1 million degrees; the red paths correspond to some of the rain tracks analyzed by Antolin et al. Image credit: Patrick Antolin / ESA / Solar Orbiter / EUI / HRI.

Meteor-Like ‘Fireballs’ Spotted in Solar Corona

Jul 6, 2023 by News Staff

Coronal rain is the most dramatic display of cooling in the Sun’s corona. It corresponds to cool and dense clumps of plasma appearing over a timescale...

This illustration shows the Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex (CBVC) on the Moon’s far side and the boxed area indicated a large granite zone, which could not be picked up by topography. Image credit: Siegler et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-023-06183-5.

Planetary Scientists Find Large Granite Formation on Moon’s Far Side

Jul 5, 2023 by News Staff

The 50-km-diameter granitic system discovered below the far side feature known as Compton-Belkovich Volcanic Complex likely was formed from the cooling...

This image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the Terra Sirenum region on Mars and its gullies. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Martian Gullies Could Have Been Formed by On-And-Off Periods of Liquid Meltwater

Jul 4, 2023 by News Staff

Some steep slopes on Mars have gullies with morphologies suggesting that they were formed by a liquid. However, the planet’s current climate is not conducive...

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