Category: Planets

Complete radial velocity time series for HD 86728. The NEID data are shown as light (Run 1) and dark (Run 2) blue circles. Credit: Gupta et al., 2024. An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new extrasolar world orbiting a nearby star known as HD 86728. This is the first exoplanet detection…

Droplet-like, rounded iron-sulfide grains embedded within Chang’ e-5 glasses of different Ti content. Credit: IGCAS The research team led by Li Yang and Cao Zhi at the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences confirmed for the first time that submicroscopic magnetite particles are common throughout the lunar surface. This information updates our…

Credit: Purdue University Since the first sighting of the first-discovered and largest asteroid in our solar system was made in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi, astronomers and planetary scientists have pondered the make-up of this asteroid/dwarf planet. Its heavily battered and dimpled surface is covered in impact craters. Scientists have long argued that visible craters on…

Nearly 400 active volcanoes punctuate the Jupiter moon Io. Using flyby data from NASA’s Juno mission that examines the volcanoes, doctoral student Madeline Pettine led a group of Cornell astronomers to study a fundamental process in planetary formation and evolution: tidal heating. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS By staring into the hellish landscape of Jupiter’s moon Io—the most…

Artist’s illustration of the exoplanet WASP-107 b based on transit observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope as well as other space- and ground-based telescopes, led by Matthew Murphy of the University of Arizona and a team of researchers around the world. Credit: Rachel Amaro, University of Arizona An international group of researchers including University…

The solar elongation of Apophis as seen from Earth during 2021–2029. The start of each year is labeled on the x-axis. Credit: The Planetary Science Journal (2024). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ad644d An astrophysicist at the University of Western Ontario finds that the odds of the asteroid 99942 Apophis striking Earth are slightly higher than previously thought. In…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The rings of Saturn are among the most famous and spectacular features in the solar system. Earth may once have had something similar. In a paper published in Earth & Planetary Science Letters, my colleagues and I present evidence that Earth may have had a ring. The existence of such a…

Arriving at its destination: This illustration shows how the Dawn space probe reaches the dwarf planet Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The dwarf planet Ceres has a diameter of almost 1,000 kilometers and is located in the asteroid belt. In the television series “The Expanse,” Ceres gained new fame as the main base of the so-called ‘belters’:…

A map showing the umbra (the moon’s central shadow) as it passes over Cleveland at 3:15 p.m. local time during the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse. NASA SVS/Ernie Wright and Michaela Garrison New NASA research reveals a process to generate extremely accurate eclipse maps, which plot the predicted path of the moon’s shadow as…

Mars deformed by its putative moon Nerio. Credit: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2408.14725 An astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory has developed a hypothesis to explain the unique shape and terrain of Mars. He suggests both are due to a long-lost moon. Michael Efroimsky has published a paper outlining the hypothesis on the arXiv preprint server….