Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

Artist’s impression of a volcano erupting on Venus. Image credit: ESA / AOES Medialab.

Venus May Be Even More Geologically Active Near Its Surface than Previously Thought

Apr 1, 2025 by News Staff

An unexpected phenomenon called convection could help explain many of the volcanoes and other features of the Venusian landscape. Artist’s impression...

The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that Hubble’s STIS instrument observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, astronomers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region (left) darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region (right) brightened as it began to come into a more direct view as northern summer approaches. The top row, in visible light, shows how the color of Uranus appears to the human eye as seen through even an amateur telescope. In the second row, the false-color image of the planet is assembled from visible and near-infrared light observations. The color and brightness correspond to the amounts of methane and aerosols. Both of these quantities could not be distinguished before STIS was first aimed at Uranus in 2002. Generally, green areas indicate less methane than blue areas, and red areas show no methane. The red areas are at the limb, where the stratosphere of Uranus is almost completely devoid of methane. The two bottom rows show the latitude structure of aerosols and methane inferred from 1,000 different wavelengths (colors) from visible to near infrared. In the third row, bright areas indicate cloudier conditions, while the dark areas represent clearer conditions. In the fourth row, bright areas indicate depleted methane, while dark areas show the full amount of methane. At middle and low latitudes, aerosols and methane depletion have their own latitudinal structure that mostly did not change much over the two decades of observation. However, in the polar regions, aerosols and methane depletion behave very differently. In the third row, the aerosols near the north pole display a dramatic increase, showing up as very dark during early northern spring, turning very bright in recent years. Aerosols also seem to disappear at the left limb as the solar radiation disappeared. This is evidence that solar radiation changes the aerosol haze in the atmosphere of Uranus. On the other hand, methane depletion seems to stay quite high in both polar regions throughout the observing period. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Erich Karkoschka, LPL.

Hubble Sheds New Light on Atmospheric Composition and Dynamics of Uranus

Apr 1, 2025 by News Staff

A 20-year Hubble study of Uranus provide valuable data for understanding the atmospheric dynamics of this distant ice giant, which can serve as a proxy...

This composite image, made using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, shows auroral activity (cyan splotches) on Neptune. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Heidi Hammel, AURA / Henrik Melin, Northumbria University / Leigh Fletcher, University of Leicester / Stefanie Milam, NASA-GSFC.

Webb Detects Trihydrogen, Captures Aurorae on Neptune for First Time

Mar 26, 2025 by News Staff

Emissions from the upper-atmospheric trihydrogen cation (H3+) have been used to study the global-scale interactions of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus with...

This graphic shows the long-chain organic molecules decane, undecane, and dodecane, and NASA’s Curiosity rover. Image credit: NASA / Dan Gallagher.

Curiosity Finds Long-Chain Carbon Molecules in Martian Mudstone

Mar 25, 2025 by Natali Anderson

The Sample Analysis at Mars instrument onboard NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected decane, undecane, and dodecane molecules in a sample from Gale crater. This...

An artist’s impression of a rocky asteroid. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, Space-art.co.uk / University of Warwick / University of Cambridge.

75 Laboratory-Classified Meteorites Traced to Their Parent Asteroids in Main Belt

Mar 19, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers from SETI Institute, NASA’s Ames Research Center and Curtin University have traced the impact orbit of 75 observed meteorite falls to several...

Mars appears light blue in this near-infrared image from Hera’s Hyperscout H hyperspectral imager, acquired during the mission’s March 12 gravity-assist flyby of Mars, with Deimos seen ahead of it. The spacecraft was approximately 1,000 km from the 12.4-km-diameter Deimos when this image was acquired. In the background a variety of Martian features can be observed. At the top of the image is the bright Terra Sabaea region, close to the Martian equator, outlined by darker regions about it, with the 450 km-diameter Huygen crater to the bottom right of Terra Sabaea and the 460-km-diameter Schiaparelli crater to its left. To the bottom right of the Martian disk is Hellas Basin, among the largest known impact craters in the Solar System with a diameter of 2,300 km and a depth of more than 7 km. Image credit: ESA.

Hera Captures Images of Mars and Its Moon Deimos

Mar 14, 2025 by News Staff

On March 12, 2025, Hera — ESA’s first Space Safety mission — came to within 5,000 km of the surface of Mars and 1,000 km of Deimos. While...

This image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument shows Saturn

Saturn Now Has 274 Moons after New Discovery

Mar 13, 2025 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Taiwan, Canada, the United States, and France has observed 128 additional moons orbiting the gas giant Saturn, bringing its...

Lightning starts with a positive fast discharge, followed by an even faster and more extensive negative discharge observed in 3D; signal polarizations slant from the discharge propagation direction and rotate between the two opposite fast discharges; these features can only be due to a cosmic-ray shower that preconditioned the discharge path and guided the discharge current direction. Image credit: ELG21.

Cosmic-Ray Showers Play Pivotal Role in Triggering Lightning Flashes

Mar 11, 2025 by News Staff

How lightning is started in thunderstorms is poorly known. With a newly-developed 3D mapping and polarization system, physicists at Los Alamos National...

This image from the Emirates Mars Mission shows Mars and its thin atmosphere. Image credit: UAESA / MBRSC / Hope Mars Mission / EXI / AndreaLuck.

Middle Atmosphere of Mars is Driven by Gravity Waves, New Research Suggests

Mar 6, 2025 by News Staff

Atmospheric gravity waves play a crucial role in driving latitudinal air currents on the Red Planet, particularly at high altitudes, according to a new...

Shatter cones at the North Pole Dome in the center of the Pilbara region, Australia. Image credit: Curtin University.

3.47-Billion-Year-Old Impact Crater Discovered in Australia

Mar 6, 2025 by News Staff

A team of geologists from Curtin University has discovered unequivocal evidence for a hypervelocity meteorite impact 3.47 billion years ago (Archean Eon)...

This artist’s concept depicts one of the possible scenarios for the Altjira system in the Kuiper Belt. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Joseph Olmsted, STScI.

Kuiper-Belt Object Altjira is Likely a Hierarchical Triple System

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

Altjira, also known as 2001 UQ18, is located in the outer reaches of the Solar System, 6 billion km (3.7 billion miles) away, or 44 times the distance...

The Sun as seen by Solar Orbiter in extreme ultraviolet light from a distance of roughly 75 million km. The image is a mosaic of 25 individual images taken on March 7, 2022 by the high resolution telescope of the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. Taken at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, this image reveals the Sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona, which has a temperature of around a million degrees Celsius. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / E. Kraaikamp, ROB.

Solar Heat May Play Role in Seismic Activity on Earth

Mar 4, 2025 by News Staff

Heat from our Sun drives atmospheric temperature changes on Earth, which in turn can affect things like rock properties and underground water movement,...

This VLT image shows the near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4. Image credit: ESO / O. Hainaut.

VLT Focuses on Near-Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4

Feb 27, 2025 by News Staff

A near-Earth asteroid called 2024 YR4 has been closely monitored in the past couple of months as its odds of impacting Earth in 2032 rose to around 3%....

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

Giant Glaciers Reshaped Earth’s Surface and Paved Way for Complex Life

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

By chemically analyzing crystals in ancient rocks, scientists from Curtin University, the University of Portsmouth and St. Francis Xavier University discovered...

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

Lucy Captures Its First Images of Main-Belt Asteroid Donaldjohanson

Feb 26, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will fly by the small asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20, 2025. By blinking between images captured by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft...

This artist’s concept shows a cutaway of Mars, along with the paths of seismic waves from two separate marsquakes in 2021. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Maryland.

Mars May Have Solid Inner Core

Feb 26, 2025 by News Staff

A team of researchers at the Bayerisches Geoinstitut has conducted high-pressure-temperature laboratory experiments to determine the crystal structure...

This image from Mars Express’ High Resolution Stereo Camera shows the globe of Mars set against a dark background. The disk of the planet features yellow, orange, blue and green patches, all with an overall muted grey hue, representing the varying composition of the surface. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / G. Michael / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Water-Rich Iron Mineral May Be Main Culprit behind Mars’ Red Color

Feb 25, 2025 by News Staff

Called ferrihydrite, this iron mineral formed during a cold, wet period on early Mars under oxidative conditions, followed by a transition to the current...

Visualization of the Radcliffe Wave. Image credit: Alyssa Goodman / Harvard University.

Our Solar System Crossed ‘Radcliffe Wave’ during Miocene Epoch, Astronomers Say

Feb 25, 2025 by Natali Anderson

As our Solar System orbits the Milky Way, it encounters various environments, including dense regions of the interstellar medium. These encounters can...

A panoramic photo taken by China’s Zhurong rover on Mars. Image credit: National Astronomical Observatories.

Early Mars Was Home to Sun-Soaked, Sandy Beaches, New Study Suggests

Feb 25, 2025 by News Staff

Using data gathered by China’s Zhurong rover, planetary researchers have identified hidden layers of rock under the Martian surface that strongly suggest...

This Curiosity/Mastcam image shows noctilucent clouds in the Martian atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / SSI.

Curiosity Spots Noctilucent Clouds in Martian Atmosphere

Feb 13, 2025 by News Staff

New images, taken over 16 min on January 17, 2025 by the Mastcam instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover, show noctilucent, or twilight clouds, in the atmosphere...

«‹3 456 7 ›»