Tag Archive for 'Tilt'

An artist’s impression of the five-planet system HD 108236. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Even in ‘Pristine’ Planetary Systems, Planets Exhibit Bit of Tilt

Nov 28, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers have long puzzled over why all of the planets in our Solar System have slightly slanted orbits around the Sun. But Yale University planetary...

From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbits once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational ‘glue’ to hold it all together. But this pull of gravity is much weaker in the Galaxy’s far outer disk. There, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way’s gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, instead they give the disk an S-like, or warped, appearance. Image credit: Xiaodian Chen.

Milky Way is Embedded in Tilted Dark Matter Halo, Research Suggests

Oct 12, 2023 by News Staff

The outer disk of our Milky Way Galaxy is warped and flared. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain these phenomena, but none have reproduced...

Composite of a true color image of Saturn, observed by Cassini in 2016, overlaid with a false color representation of the ultraviolet aurora in the northern hemisphere as observed on August 20, 2017. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / A. Bader, Lancaster University.

Destroyed Moon Could Explain Saturn’s Young Rings and Present-Day Tilt

Sep 16, 2022 by News Staff

Saturn’s rings — thought to have formed a mere 100 million years ago — are one of the most distinctive planetary features in our Solar System....

An artist’s impression of the Gliese 414 system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Modestly Tilted Planets More Capable of Evolving Complex Life, Study Suggests

Jul 8, 2021 by News Staff

Earth’s sphere tilts on its axis at an angle of 23.5 degrees; this gives us our seasons, with parts of the planet receiving more direct sunlight in summer...

This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.

Radio Astronomers Measure Fundamental Properties of Venus

Apr 30, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using Earth-based radar observations have measured some of the fundamental properties of the planet Venus: the precise length of a day, the...