Tag Archive for 'Solar System'

Artist’s conception of the dust and gas surrounding a newly formed planetary system. Image credit: NASA.

Earth’s Water Explained by Gas Giant Gluttony

Jul 19, 2017 by James Romero

Water on Earth, Mars and everywhere within the inner Solar System can be traced back to the rapid waist-expanding growth of Jupiter and Saturn, which knocked...

A global map of the dwarf planet Pluto. Terrain south of about 30°S was in darkness leading up to and during the flyby, so is shown in black. ‘S’ and ‘T’ indicate Sputnik Planitia and Tartarus Dorsa. Image credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / LPI.

NASA Releases Spectacular Flyover Videos, Global Maps of Pluto and Charon

Jul 18, 2017 by News Staff

On July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made its historic flight through the Pluto system. On the two-year anniversary of the flyby, the New...

This scanning electron microscope image shows a tardigrade. Image credit: Diane Nelson, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior.

Earth’s Most Indestructible Creature Identified: Tardigrade

Jul 14, 2017 by News Staff

Water-dwelling, eight-legged, segmented micro-animals called tardigrades will survive the risk of extinction from all astrophysical catastrophes, and be...

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.

Juno Captures Close-Up Views of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Jul 13, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has provided planetary researchers the first close-up views of Jupiter’s mysterious, roiling storm called the Great Red Spot. This...

Experimental configuration of the X-ray Free Electron Laser probe and optical laser; the shock freezing behavior of water captured in a Debye-Scherrer geometry. Inset: schematic of target package as a cut away side view. Image credit: Gleason et al, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.025701.

Researchers Observe Real-Time Growth of Exotic ‘Ice VII’

Jul 12, 2017 by News Staff

A Stanford-led research team has captured the freezing of water, molecule-by-molecule, into a super-dense, exotic form of ice called ice VII. The results...

This image of Saturn’s moon Epimetheus was taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on February 21, 2017, using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nm. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Captures Stunning View of Saturn’s Small Moon Epimetheus

Jul 11, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA’s Cassini robotic orbiter captured this incredible view of Epimetheus, an inner satellite of Saturn, during a flyby on February 21, 2017. The flyby...

An artist’s rendering of the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Image credit: Benjamin de Bivort, debivort.org / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Hydrocarbon Seas on Saturn’s Moon Titan are Very Calm

Jul 6, 2017 by News Staff

New research has found that most waves on Titan’s seas of liquid hydrocarbons are diminutive, reaching only about 1 cm (0.4 inches) high and 20 cm (8...

This composite, false-color infrared image of Jupiter reveals haze particles over a range of altitudes, as seen in reflected sunlight. It was taken using the Gemini North telescope’s Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI) on May 18, 2017. The multiple filters corresponding to each color used in the image cover wavelengths between 1.69 microns and 2.275 microns. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS) appears as the brightest (white) region at these wavelengths, which are primarily sensitive to high-altitude clouds and hazes near and above the top of Jupiter's convective region. The GRS is one of the highest-altitude features in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Narrow spiral streaks that appear to lead into it or out of it from surrounding regions probably represent atmospheric features being stretched by the intense winds within the GRS, such as the hook-like structure on its western edge (left side). Some are being swept off its eastern edge (right side) and into an extensive wave-like flow pattern, and there is even a trace of flow from its northern edge. Other features near the GRS include the dark block and dark oval to the south and the north of the eastern flow pattern, respectively, indicating a lower density of cloud and haze particles in those locations. Both are long-lived cyclonic circulations, rotating clockwise -- in the opposite direction as the counterclockwise rotation of the GRS. A prominent wave pattern is evident north of the equator, along with two bright ovals, which are anticyclones that appeared in January 2017. Both the wave pattern and the ovals may be associated with an impressive upsurge in stormy activity that has been observed in these latitudes this year. Another bright anticyclonic oval is seen further north. High hazes are evident over both polar regions with much spatial structure not previously been seen quite so clearly in ground-based images. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA / NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Infrared Images of Jupiter from Subaru and Gemini Telescopes to Enhance Juno Flyby

Jul 4, 2017 by News Staff

High-resolution imaging of Jupiter and its Great Red Spot by the Subaru Telescope and the Gemini North telescope, both on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea peak, is...

An illustration of an asteroid on its way to ancient Mars. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO / Nathan Owen-Price / Sci.News.

Mars’ Two-Faces and Moons Could Result from an Early Cataclysmic Impact

Jul 4, 2017 by James Romero

Mars experienced a single colossal impact during its first 130 million years, the equivalent to the largest body in the today’s asteroid belt slamming...

Ground-Based Telescope Detects Methanol at Saturn’s Moon Enceladus

Jul 3, 2017 by News Staff

Using the IRAM radio telescope, astronomers have observed an extended gas cloud around Saturn’s moon Enceladus and detected the signature of the organic...

Georgia Tech researchers propose that a ‘switch-like’ magnetosphere exists at Uranus in both equinox and solstice seasons, where the planetary rotation drives the interchange between an open magnetosphere and a closed magnetosphere each Uranus day. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Uranus Has ‘Switch-Like’ Magnetosphere

Jun 27, 2017 by News Staff

A new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics suggests that the magnetosphere of the ice giant Uranus gets flipped on and...

A view of the limb of the Sun. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.

Researchers Uncover Origins of Solar Spicules

Jun 26, 2017 by News Staff

A team of solar physicists from the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, University of Oslo and Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory...

A planetary mass object the size of Mars would be sufficient to produce the observed perturbations in the distant Kuiper Belt. Image credit: Heather Roper / Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona.

Mars-to-Earth-Mass Planet May Lurk in Outer Solar System: Planet 10

Jun 22, 2017 by News Staff

An unknown Mars-to-Earth-mass planet may lurk in the outer reaches of the Solar System, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be...

Left: arriving at Uranus in 1986, Voyager 2 observed a bluish orb with subtle features; a haze layer hid most of the planet’s cloud features from view. Right: this image of Neptune was produced from Voyager 2 and shows the Great Dark Spot and its companion bright smudge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Researchers Complete Study of Potential Future Mission to Uranus and Neptune Systems

Jun 21, 2017 by News Staff

A study of the potential future mission to ‘ice giant’ planets Uranus and Neptune and their moons has been released — the first in a series of...

This artist’s concept shows MAVEN in orbit around Mars, with a fanciful image of Earth in the background. Image credit: NASA / GSFC.

NASA’s MAVEN Mission Celebrates 1,000 Earth Days in Orbit around Mars

Jun 17, 2017 by News Staff

Today, NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission — sent to Mars to explore its upper atmosphere, ionosphere and interactions...

Elon Musk’s Vision of Self-Sustaining Martian City, Manned Flights to Mars, Other Planets

Jun 15, 2017 by News Staff

An article entitled ‘Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species’ presents the vision of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, for future manned trips to Mars and...

This image of Iapetus was taken with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera on March 11, 2017. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Cassini Beams Back New Image of Saturn’s Moon Iapetus

Jun 13, 2017 by News Staff

A new image of Saturn’s yin-yang moon, Iapetus, was recently captured by NASA’s Cassini probe, currently in its ‘Grand Finale’ phase. This image...

Jupiter is the oldest planet in the Solar System. Image credit: NASA.

Jupiter is Solar System’s Oldest Planet, Planetary Researchers Say

Jun 12, 2017 by News Staff

The gas giant Jupiter is not only the most massive planet in our Solar System, but it’s also the oldest, according to an international team of planetary...

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.

Could Pluto’s Orbital Wobbles Create Its Mysterious Glacial Crazy-Paving?

Jun 6, 2017 by James Romero

Strange fields of polygons seen during New Horizons’ visit to Pluto could be explained by million year variations in the dwarf planet’s orbit caused...

$This enhanced-color view of Enceladus is largely of the southern hemisphere and includes the south polar terrain at the bottom of the image. Ancient craters remain somewhat pristine in some locales, but have clearly relaxed in others. Northward-trending fractures, likely caused by a change in the moon’s rate of rotation and the consequent flattening of the moon’s shape, rip across the southern hemisphere. The south polar terrain is marked by a striking set of ‘blue’ fractures and encircled by a conspicuous and continuous chain of folds and ridges, testament to the forces within Enceladus that have yet to be silenced. The mosaic was created from 21 false-color frames taken during Cassini’s close approaches to Enceladus on March 9 and July 14, 2005. Images taken using filters sensitive to UV, visible and IR light (spanning wavelengths from 338 to 930 nm) were combined to create the individual frames. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute.$

Enceladus May Have Tipped Over in Distant Past

Jun 5, 2017 by News Staff

While combing through data gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during flybys of Enceladus, the sixth-largest of Saturn’s moons, researchers have...

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