Latest Planet Stories
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...
[WATCH VIDEO: Flying Through The HD 100546 System] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers, for the first time, may have made a direct observation of a planet forming inside a thick disc of gas and dust. An international team led by Sascha Quanz, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), used the European Space Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). Their discovery could help improve scientists' knowledge of how planets form and...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Have you ever looked out into the heavens and a perfect name for an as-yet-unnamed planet just popped into your head? Until today, chances are, unless you were close personal friends or family of an astronomy professional, that name would sit idly in your own mind. Thanks in no small part to a team of leading astronomers, planetary scientists, former space program executives and educators; a new space website called Uwingu launched...
Pioneering scientists redefine what influences movement in solar system and invite scientists, theorists and solar system experts to comment on the "More than Gravity" thesis LANCASTER, N.Y., Feb. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- A new theory on the forces that control planetary orbit refutes the 400-year old assumptions currently held by the scientific community. Scientific and engineering experts Gerhard and Kevin Neumaier have established a relationship between solar winds and a quantized...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Star Trek fans everywhere have a reason to rejoice today as a contest to name one of Pluto’s two previously unnamed moons ended with one Spock-tacular name reaching, for lack of a better term, warp speed. William Shatner, the man best known for his role as Captain James Tiberius Kirk on the 1960’s television sci-fi classic, which later spawned a large movie franchise and several spin-offs, proposed Vulcan as the name of one of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists are on the hunt to find habitable exoplanets, and a new discovery might mean there are even more candidates out there than previously thought. A new theoretical study suggests even dying stars might be able to have orbiting exoplanets that are hospitable to extraterrestrial life. As a star dies, its outer layers puff off, leaving behind a hot core known as a white dwarf which is typically about the size of Earth. Although...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The world's smallest space telescope will be launching on Monday, aiming to push the boundaries of astronomy. The telescope satellite was designed, assembled and deployed fast and relatively cheap, by the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS). Each of the BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) satellites weigh less than 15 pounds, and are part of a new mission demonstrating that...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Another new planetary system has been discovered by Kepler scientists, and this one happens to be home to the smallest planet ever discovered, circling around a star that is strikingly similar to our Sun. The Kepler-37 system sits about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Only slightly larger than our moon, smaller than Mercury, and about a third the size of Earth, one of its planets is the smallest ever identified by...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of...
On February 15, asteroid 2012 DA14 passed extraordinarily close to the earth. Unlike the unexpected asteroid collision over Russia that day, this encounter never presented any danger but astronomers were eager to observe the event. An international team led by Nicholas Moskovitz (MIT) observed the asteroid with a number of telescopes, including the 2.1m telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory: the accompanying video shows the asteroid as it was leaving the vicinity of the earth. As Dr....
Latest Planet Reference Libraries
Image Caption: Artistic concept of a planetary system. Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/JPL-Caltech The term Astronomy encompasses a broad range of topics, including the study of stars, galaxies, and planets. In order to focus on the different areas of study, many subfields of astronomy emerge. One such area is the study of planets known, appropriately, as Planetary Astronomy. Observational Planetary Astronomy Even within the field of Planetary Astronomy, there are several divisions to...
Planetary and Space Science is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1959 and published by Elsevier 15 times per year. As of May 2012, the editor-in-chief is Rita Schulz (The Netherlands). The journal publishes original research articles and short communications. The main focus is on solar system processes which encompass multiple areas of the natural sciences. Research that involves planetary and space sciences involves many disciplines. Celestial mechanics is part of these...
Terraforming -- Terraforming (literally, "Earth-shaping") is the process of modifying a planet, moon or other body to a more habitable atmosphere, temperature or ecology. The term was first used in a science fiction novel, 'Seetee Shock' (1940?) by Jack Williamson, but the actual concept is older than that. An example in fiction is 'First and Last Men' by Olaf Stapledon in which Venus is modified, after a long and destructive war with the original inhabitants, who naturally object to the...
Cosmogony -- Cosmogony is the study of the origins of celestial objects. It is most commonly used to refer to the study of the origin of the solar system. Currently, the most widely accepted theory is that the solar system was formed roughly 5 billion years ago with the collapse of a nebula of gas and dust, likely caused by shock waves generated by a nearby supernova. The solar system would have formed as a member of a star cluster, now long-since dispersed throughout the Milky Way...
Terrestrial Planet Finder -- The Terrestrial Planet Finder is a proposed NASA telescope system capable of detecting extrasolar terrestrial planets. In May 2002, NASA chose two TPF mission architecture concepts for further study and technology development. Each would use a different means to achieve the same goal - to block the light from a parent star in order to see its much smaller, dimmer planets. That technology challenge has been likened to finding a firefly near the beam of...
