Tag: Planets
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It’s a UFO! It’s a walnut? No … It’s Pan, one of Saturn’s weirdest-looking moons
A picture taken by the high-resolution camera on the Cassini orbiter shows Pan’s weird-looking equatorial ridge. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI) Astronomers have long known that Pan, one of the “shepherd moons” in Saturn’s rings, had a weird shape. But it took this week’s high-resolution images from the Cassini orbiter to show them just how…
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Looking for life: Scientists find 7 possibly Earthlike planets orbiting ultracool star
A diagram shows seven exoplanets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1. If the planets were transported to our own solar system, they’d all lie within Mercury’s orbit. (ESO Illustration) A second look at an exoplanet system 40 light-years from Earth has brought a bonanza for astronomers: not two, not three, but seven alien worlds…
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Hunt for Planet Nine leads to mini-worlds
An artist’s conception shows Planet X, a.k.a. Planet Nine. (Credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Inst.) The hypothetical world known as Planet X or Planet Nine hasn’t yet been found, but thanks to the search, astronomers have discovered smaller worlds on the solar system’s edge. Mapping such objects could lead to the big discovery: a planet that’s thought to…
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Proxima Centauri b confirmed! Potentially habitable planet orbits the star next door
An artist’s conception shows Proxima Centauri b orbiting its parent star, a red dwarf, with the two other stars of the Alpha Centauri system in the far background. (Credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO) The rumors you’ve heard are mostly true: Scientists say the star that’s closest to our solar system has a planet that could be…
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Revived Kepler mission confirms 104 new planets, and two could be a lot like Earth
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Kepler telescope observing four planets as they pass across the disk of their parent star. The comparative sizes of the spacecraft and the star are not to scale. (Credit: NASA / JPL) Astronomers say they’ve confirmed the existence of 104 worlds to add to the list of extrasolar planets detected…
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Astronomers say they’ve spotted a dwarf planet that’s farther out than Pluto
The golden ellipse indicates the orbit of the newly confirmed object 2015 RR245. Click on the image for a larger version. (Credit: Alex Parker / OSSOS Team) Astronomers have found an icy world that ranges far beyond the orbit of Neptune and may well rank as a dwarf planet alongside Pluto. The newly detected object, designated…
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Scientists explain how a giant impact created Mars’ past and present moons
An artist’s conception shows the collision of Mars with another celestial object. The scenario could have given rise to a debris disk, and eventually to Mars’ two present-day moons. (Copyright 2016 Labex UnivEarthS) Are Mars’ two moons asteroids that were captured by the Red Planet’s gravitational field, or are they the result of an ancient…
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Juno meets Jupiter: NASA’s giant mission to the giant planet hits its climax on video
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter. (Credit: NASA / SwRI) Everything about NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter is big: the destination (giant planet, duh!), the cost ($1.1 billion), the travel time (five years to cruise 1.8 million miles), even the solar panels (totaling 635 square feet in area, about the size…
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Have any alien civilizations ever existed? Astronomers say the chances are sky-high
Ellie Arroway (played by Jodie Foster) listens for alien signals in the movie “Contact.” (Credit: Warner Bros.) Are we alone? Fifty-five years ago, astronomer Frank Drake came up with an equation that weighed the odds for aliens, and now two astronomers have tweaked the formula to come up with a slightly different spin. Their bottom…
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New Horizons provides the best close-up of Pluto some of us might ever see
Craters and linear features are scattered across Pluto’s terrain in this high-resolution view from NASA’s New Horizons probe. (Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI) Almost a year after NASA’s New Horizons probe flew past Pluto, the team behind the mission has put together a long mosaic strip that includes all of the highest-resolution images. “This…