Can tidal forces cause an exoplanet’s surface to radiate heat? This is what a recent study accepted to The Astronomical Journal hopes to address as a team of international researchers used data collected from ground-based instruments to confirm the existence of a second exoplanet residing within the exoplanetary system, HD 104067, along with using NASA’s …
Radiating Exoplanet Discovered in “Perfect Tidal Storm” Read More »
Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects of wildly different masses interacted for billions of years, seeking natural stability. But its history—including the migration of the giant planets—explains what we see today in our Solar System and maybe in other, distant solar …
The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed Read More »
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, Apollo astronauts set up a collection of lunar seismometers to detect possible Moon quakes. These instruments monitored lunar activity for eight years and gave planetary scientists an indirect glimpse into the Moon’s interior. Now, researchers are developing new methods for lunar quake detection techniques and technologies. If all goes …
Artemis Astronauts Will Deploy New Seismometers on the Moon Read More »
The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice. Astronomers thought the ice was ancient when they were discovered, like in the moon’s permanently shadowed regions. But something was puzzling. Why did some of these shadowed craters hold ice while others did not? Ceres was first discovered in 1801 and was considered …
Ice Deposits on Ceres Might Only Be a Few Thousand Years Old Read More »
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles accelerated to extreme velocities approaching the speed of light. It takes an extremely powerful event to send these bits of matter blazing through the Universe. Astronomers theorize that cosmic rays are ejected by supernova explosions that mark the death of supergiant stars. But recent data collected by the Fermi Gamma-ray …
NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit. But what goes up must come down, and if whatever is coming down doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere, it will strike Earth somewhere. Even Florida isn’t safe. Careful consideration goes into releasing debris from the International Space Station. Its mass is measured and calculated …
NASA Confirms that a Piece of its Battery Pack Smashed into a Florida Home Read More »
A Falcon 9 stands ready for a Starlink mission at Cape Canaveral’s pad 40. File photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now. SpaceX is preparing for one more Falcon 9 launch to close out the week at the Cape. The Starlink 6-52 mission will add 23 more satellites to the growing low Earth orbit constellation. Liftoff from Space …
A new theory suggests that Titan’s majestic dune fields may be have come from outer space. Researchers had always assumed that the sand making up Titan’s dunes was locally made, through erosion or condensed from atmospheric hydrocarbons. But researchers from the University of Colorado want to know: Could it have come from comets? The dunes …
The BepiColombo mission, a joint effort between JAXA and the ESA, was only the second (and most advanced) mission to visit Mercury, the least explored planet in the Solar System. With two probes and an advanced suite of scientific instruments, the mission addressed several unresolved questions about Mercury, including the origin of its magnetic field, …
The Solar Wind is Stripping Oxygen and Carbon Away From Venus Read More »
You had to be in the right part of North America to get a great view of the recent solar eclipse. But a particular telescope may have had the most unique view of all. Even though that telescope is in Hawaii and only experienced a partial eclipse, its images are interesting. You had to be …
The Solar Eclipse Like We’ve Never Seen it Before Read More »
