Charting Massive Winds On Gas Giants Of The Outer Solar System
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Predicting the weather is difficult. With varying pressures, planetary rotation and various other factors, weather systems on Earth border on chaos. But, believe it or not,...
Latest Gas giant Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In addition to the eight beloved planets circling our Sun, our galaxy is literally teeming with an enormous variety of planets. More than 800 of the so-called exoplanets have been identified circling stars beyond our solar system. And several different “species” of exoplanets have been discovered as well, including so-called ‘roasters’ or ‘hot Jupiters,’ which are gas giants like our own Jupiter that orbit closely to their...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online At the dawn of our Solar System the planets were very hot, as the energy from their creation lingered. But over time the planets would cool, becoming darker, only occasionally paused in this process by large impacts or radioactive decay. At least that is what we would expect. A mystery that has puzzled scientists for half a century revolves around the appearance of the planet Saturn. The second largest planet in our Solar...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of astronomers has made the most detailed examination to date of the atmosphere around a Jupiter-like exoplanet using the Keck Observatory, one of the two largest optical telescopes in the world. The young exoplanet, orbiting the star HR 8799, has water and carbon monoxide in its atmosphere. It does not, however, have methane, suggesting that a particular planet-forming mechanism, known as core accretion, brought...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online New research from Carnegie Institution for Science looks at how gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn formed and evolved. Using theoretical modeling, lead researcher Alan Boss provides clues that gas giants may form in the presence of gas disks that surround stars in their infancy. The work was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. By observing young stars that are surrounded by gas disks, Boss demonstrated that...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Listen to the podcast “How Planets Form” with redOrbit's Dr. John Millis and planet-hunting expert Dr. Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester. Astronomers who made observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope are helping to shed light on planet-forming gas streams. The international team of astronomers studied the young star HD 142527, seeing a key stage in...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered vast comet belts that are surrounding two nearby planetary systems using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel space observatory. Scientists found that that nearby planetary systems, GJ 581 and 61 Vir, have been found to host vast amounts of cometary debris. The ESA observatory detected the signatures of cold dust in quantities that mean these systems must have at least 10 times more comets...
NASA Science [ Watch The Video ] An international team of astronomers has caught a star in the act of devouring one of its planets. BD+48 740, a red giant they observed using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, appears to have the fumes of a scorched planet in its atmosphere. This is consistent with a rocky world, recently destroyed. Could the same thing happen to Earth? Yes indeed, says Alex Wolszczan, a member of the research team from Penn...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online New, exquisitely detailed, high-resolution images of Uranus show off its complex weather patterns and new features of the planet that scientists can't explain yet. Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, is an ice giant composed mainly of frozen methane, water, ammonia and hydrocarbons. In 1986, Voyager 2 passed by Uranus and returned the iconic image that most associate with the planet. This image showed a smooth, blue-green...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online According to NASA-funded astronomers, planets can indeed form in dense stellar environments. This evidence comes from the recent discovery of planets that were observed orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The newfound planets are not habitable, and are considered to be two hot Jupiters, which are massive gas planets. Each of the hot Jupiter planets circle a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, which is...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Jupiter orbiter Juno successfully fired its engine Thursday as it prepares to make a crucial fly-by around Earth to give it the momentum it needs to shoot off toward the solar system’s largest planet. The firing of the main engine lasted just short of 30 minutes, and should give the spacecraft, which is currently about 300 million miles away, the push it needs to make the boomerang pass. The maneuver is the first of two...
Latest Gas giant Reference Libraries
Terrestrial Planet -- A terrestrial planet is a planet that is mostly composed of silicate rocks and may or may not have a relatively thin atmosphere. The term is derived from the Greek word for Earth, so an alternate definition would be those planets that are more Earth-like than not. Terrestrial planets are very different from gas giants, which may or may not have solid surfaces and are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium in various physical states. Only one terrestrial planet,...
Planet -- A planet is a body of considerable mass that orbits a star and that doesn't produce energy through nuclear fusion. Until recently, only nine were known (all of them in our own Solar system). As of the end of 2002 over 100 are known, with all of the new discoveries being extrasolar planets. Astronomers often call asteroids minor planets, and call the larger planetary bodies (those which are commonly called planets) major planets. Planets within the solar system can be...
Gas Giant -- A gas giant is a generic astronomical term invented by the science fiction writer James Blish to describe any large planet that is not composed mostly of rock or other solid matter. Gas giants may still have a solid core - in fact, it is expected that such a core is probably required for a gas giant to form - but the majority of its mass is in the form of gas (or gas compressed into a liquid state). Unlike rocky planets, gas giants do not have a well-defined surface. There...
The Solar System refers to the area in space that is dominated by our own Sun. It is comprised of the Sun and its associated astronomical objects that are held in its gravitational orbit. The Solar System was formed as a result of the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The mass of this system is located almost entirely in the Sun. Apart from the Sun, a high percentage of the remainder of the system’s mass is located in the eight solitary planets that...
Planet Neptune -- Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun. It is a gas giant. Orbiting so far from the sun, Neptune receives very little heat. Its 'surface' temperature is -218 degrees Celsius (below zero). However, the planet seems to have an internal source of heat. It is thought that this may be leftover heat generated by infalling matter during the planet's birth, now slowly radiating away into space. Neptune's atmosphere has the highest wind speeds in the solar system, up to...
