Tag: Planets
-
Cassini orbiter’s team turns Saturn crash into cause for celebration – and for science
An artist’s conception shows the Cassini orbiter zooming through the upper layers of Saturn’s atmosphere, heading for a fiery breakup. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration) Twenty years after its launch to Saturn, NASA has set the Cassini orbiter on a course for certain destruction on Friday – but there’s a decidedly positive spin to the $3.3…
-
Hours before its doom, NASA’s Cassini probe takes its parting shots at Saturn
Saturn and its rings star in one of the last raw images sent back by the Cassini orbiter. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute) The final pictures from NASA’s 13-year-long Cassini mission at Saturn are flowing in – and they’re good to the last drop. Or even better, good to the last moonset. Raw images,…
-
Why these scientists argue that we are turning Earth into an alien planet
Imagery from the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership satellite shows Earth’s lights at night. In a newly published study, researchers argue that planets could be classified based on the effects of energy on the environment. (NASA Photo / Joshua Stevens / Miguel Roman) A trio of scientists has just laid out a new classification scheme…
-
Project Blue tries again with crowdfunding campaign for planet-watching telescope
An artist’s conception shows a preliminary design for the Project Blue telescope. (Project Blue via Vimeo) Project Blue is launching a second try to attract crowdfunding for a space telescope designed to study planets in the Alpha Centauri system, months after the first try fizzled. This time around, the BoldlyGo Institute and its Project Blue…
-
Hubble keeps hope alive for water on potentially habitable TRAPPIST-1 planets
This artist’s impression shows how the surface of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star may appear. The planet is in the habitable zone, so liquid water exists. (CFA Illustration / M. Weiss) Do some of the Earth-sized planets around a dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1, just 40 light-years away, have liquid water? Newly reported findings…
-
Scientists say there may be yet another unseen planet at solar system’s edge
An artist’s conception shows a hypothesized planet orbiting off the main plane of the solar system. The depicted orbits and planetary sizes are not shown to scale. (UA / LPL Illustration / Heather Roper) Astronomers say they’ve found hints that an unseen planetary-mass object may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system. And…
-
NASA’s Kepler space telescope points to 10 new planets in the habitable zone
An artist’s conception highlights the worlds detected by NASA’s Kepler probe. (NASA / JPL-Caltech Illustration) Astronomers say they’ve used NASA’s Kepler space telescope to discover 10 Earth-sized planet candidates where life could lurk. The 10 prospects are a part of a larger pool of 219 exoplanet candidates announced today. One of the newly detected candidates,…
-
NASA’s Juno orbiter maps Jupiter’s super cyclones and monstrous magnetism
This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles. The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles in diameter. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Betsy Asher Hall / Gervasio Robles) NASA’s Juno orbiter has been sending back stunning pictures of Jupiter for…
-
Astronomers use the music of the spheres to track TRAPPIST-1’s seventh planet
An artist’s conception shows the planet TRAPPIST-1h. (NASA / JPL-Caltech) An international research team led by a University of Washington astronomer has worked out the intricate dance of seven planets circling an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1, nailing down the coordinates of the outermost world in the process. The astronomers found that all seven…
-
Newfound super-Earth could be the best planet for analyzing alien atmospheres
An artist’s impression shows a super-Earth passing across the disk of the faint red star known as LHS 1140. (CfA Illustration / M. Weiss) It’s not the closest potentially habitable planet, but astronomers say a world 40 percent wider than Earth could be one of the best places to target in the search for life beyond…