Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

Map of sulfur dioxide (a) band depth and (b) band area for all four Hubble visits. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Bjorn Jonsson / Becker et al., doi: 10.3847/PSJ/ac69eb.

Hubble Explores Surface of Europa in Mid-UV

Jun 22, 2022 by News Staff

The new mid-ultraviolet (UV) maps of Europa, created using data from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble...

This impressive view of Charon was captured on July 14, 2015. Charon’s color palette is not as diverse as Pluto’s; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.

New Research Sheds Light on Origin of Charon’s Red Polar Cap

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

The thin methane atmosphere of Pluto’s biggest moon, Charon, undergoes ‘explosive’ pulsations owing to the Pluto-Charon’s system’s near sideways...

Venus in real colors, processed from Mariner 10 images. Image credit: Mattias Malmer / NASA.

Sulfur-Metabolizing Aerial Life Cannot Explain Composition of Venus’ Atmosphere, Scientists Say

Jun 21, 2022 by News Staff

In new research, a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge has tested the ‘life in the Venusian clouds’ hypothesis. Jordan et al. demonstrate...

As a metallic asteroid such as Psyche cooled and solidified, iron volcanoes may have erupted onto its surface. Image credit: Elena Hartley.

ALMA Creates Detailed Maps of Main-Belt Asteroid Psyche

Jun 20, 2022 by News Staff

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array located on the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile allowed the acquisition of temperature images of (16) Psyche,...

This image shows part of the scarred and colorful landscape in Aonia Terra, Mars. The image comprises data gathered by Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on April 25, 2022. It was created using data from the nadir channel, the field of view aligned perpendicular to the surface of Mars, and the color channels of the HRSC. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin.

Mars Express Sees ‘Colorful’ Landscape in Aonia Terra

Jun 15, 2022 by News Staff

A new image from ESA’s Mars Express orbiter shows part of Aonia Terra, an upland region in the southern highlands of Mars. This image shows part of the...

The interstellar dust map made with Gaia’s data release 3. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Its Third Full Dataset

Jun 14, 2022 by News Staff

Gaia’s data release 3 (DR3) contains new and improved details for almost 2 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy as well as for a subset of solar system...

This visible-light image of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017 using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. Near the top, a long brown feature called a ‘brown barge’ extends 72,000 km (nearly 45,000 miles) in the east-west direction. The Great Red Spot stands out prominently in the lower left, while the smaller feature nicknamed Red Spot Jr. (known to Jovian scientists as Oval BA) appears to its lower right. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / Wong et al. / de Pater et al. / M. Zamani.

Jupiter’s Atmosphere is Inhomogeneous, New Study Suggests

Jun 8, 2022 by News Staff

While the massive atmosphere of Jupiter consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the key to understanding the gas giant’s formation and evolution lies...

This diagram shows three layers of aerosols in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune. The height scale on the diagram represents the pressure above 10 bar. The deepest layer (Aerosol-1 layer) is thick and composed of a mixture of hydrogen sulfide ice and particles produced by the interaction of the planets’ atmospheres with sunlight. The key layer that affects the colors is the middle layer, which is a layer of haze particles (Aerosol-2 layer) that is thicker on Uranus than on Neptune. Irwin et al. suspect that, on both planets, methane ice condenses onto the particles in this layer, pulling the particles deeper into the atmosphere in a shower of methane snow. Because Neptune has a more active, turbulent atmosphere than Uranus does, the team believes Neptune’s atmosphere is more efficient at churning up methane particles into the haze layer and producing this snow. This removes more of the haze and keeps Neptune’s haze layer thinner than it is on Uranus, meaning the blue color of Neptune looks stronger. Above both of these layers is an extended layer of haze (Aerosol-3 layer) similar to the layer below it but more tenuous. On Neptune, large methane ice particles also form above this layer. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / NASA / JPL-Caltech / B. Jónsson.

Haze Layers are Responsible for Different Blue Hues of Neptune and Uranus, Scientists Say

Jun 1, 2022 by News Staff

An international team of planetary researchers led by University of Oxford scientists has performed an analysis of visible/near-infrared observations of...

This image was taken by Mastcam onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover on Sol 3466 (May 7, 2022 at 07:58:16 UTC). Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS.

Did Curiosity Rover Find ‘Doorway’ on Mars?

May 30, 2022 by The Conversation

On May 7, 2022, the Mast camera (Mastcam) onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover took a photo which appeared to show a doorway carved into the Martian rock. This...

Billions of years ago, a river flowed across the Mawrth Vallis valley on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL Caltech / University of Arizona.

New Research Sheds Light on Cause of Mars’ Transition from Wet to Dry

May 27, 2022 by News Staff

Early Mars had rivers, but the cause of the transition from a wet planet to dry remains unknown. Past Martian climate can be probed using the distribution...

This illustration shows NASA’s Lucy spacecraft passing one of the Trojan asteroids near Jupiter. Image credit: Southwest Research Institute.

Lucy Observes Total Lunar Eclipse from 100 Million Kilometers Away

May 24, 2022 by News Staff

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft successfully observed the May 15-16, 2022 total lunar eclipse from a unique vantage point, 100 million km (64 million miles) from...

An artist’s impression of the early Solar System as the Solar Nebula begins to disappear, causing asteroids to accelerate and collide. Image credit: Tobias Stierli / Flaeck.

Early Inner Solar System was Very Chaotic, Research Suggests

May 24, 2022 by News Staff

Planetary scientists from the ETH Zürich and elsewhere have determined palladium-silver (Pd-Ag) and platinum (Pt) isotope compositions of 13 iron meteorites...

Solar Orbiter Sends Back Spectacular Images of the Sun

May 20, 2022 by News Staff

On March 26, 2022, the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft made the first of its close perihelion passages. The spacecraft flew closer to the Sun than the...

InSight captured this image of one of its dust-covered solar panels on April 24, 2022. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

InSight is Gradually Losing Solar Power, NASA Says

May 18, 2022 by News Staff

By December 2022, NASA expects its InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander to have become inoperative,...

$A polished section of the Martian meteorite Miller Range (MIL) 03346: (A) photograph of the interior of MIL 03346,230; note the yellow tint in the left region of the sample, marked by dotted lines; mineral grains in the yellow-tinted region are heavily affected by aqueous alteration; (B) BSE image of the same section as in (A); light gray olivine grains, marked with arrows, are situated in the altered areas; the white boxes show locations for detailed images in (C) to (F); (C) BSE image of the upper left olivine grain, marked with a box in (B); iddingsite veins are cutting through a fractured olivine grain; augite grains and a fine-grained mesostasis (dark gray) containing titanomagnetite (bright, skeletal grains) are also shown in the figure; (D) photograph of the upper left olivine grain, same as in (C); iddingsite veins have a dark red color; (E) BSE image showing details of the upper right olivine grain; the grain is fractured and crosscut by iddingsite veins that are predominantly oriented east to west in the image; (F) photograph of the same grain as in (E), where the dark red iddingsite veins have been outlined. Image credit: Martell et al., doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abn3044.$