Well over 5,000 planets have been found orbiting other star systems. One of the satellites hunting for them is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Astronomers using TESS think they are made a rather surprising discovery; their first free-floating – or rogue – planet. The planet was discovered using gravitational microlensing where the planet passed …
Planetary nebula are some of nature’s most stunning visual displays. The name is confusing since they’re the remains of stars, not planets. But that doesn’t detract from their status as objects of captivating beauty and intense scientific study. Like all planetary nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula is the remnant of a star like our Sun. …
The venerable Hubble Space Telescope is like a gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it still making astronomical discoveries after more than thirty years in operation. It is also making discoveries by accident! Thanks to an international team of citizen scientists, with the help of astronomers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and …
Hubble Has Accidentally Discovered Over a Thousand Asteroids Read More »
The search for extrasolar planets is currently undergoing a seismic shift. With the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scientists discovered thousands of exoplanets, most of which were detected and confirmed using indirect methods. But in more recent years, and with the launch of the James Webb Space …
A surprise appearance of a new comet made the April 8th total solar eclipse all the more memorable. Any dedicated ‘umbraphile’ will tell you: no two eclipses are exactly the same. Weather, solar activity, and the just plain expeditionary nature of reaching and standing in the shadow of the Moon for those brief moments during …
There Was a Doomed Comet Near the Sun During the Eclipse 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 …
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 »
The spacecraft for the Japanese-led X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, undergoes acoustic testing in Japan in December 2022. Credit: JAXA The launch of a Japanese X-ray telescope and robotic lunar lander has been delayed to no earlier than August, and the launch schedule for another Japanese mission to return samples from a moon …
Japanese space science missions facing delays after H3 rocket failure Read More »
