Latest Planet Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The formative stages of the Milky Way, once believed to have taken far longer to occur than other solar systems, may not have been as unique as scientists had previously thought, according to the authors of a new study. Writing in the journal Science, researchers from the Centre for Star and Planet Formation at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen report they have discovered a pair of vastly different...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society suggests the size and location of an asteroid belt may determine whether life can evolve on a planet. An asteroid belt helping to play a role in the development of life may seem counterintuitive, as most view asteroids tend to destroy life. However, the latest study suggests that it is necessary for complex life. The scientists say that the asteroid belt,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Dawn spacecraft has revealed data that shows protoplanet Vesta is continually stirring its outermost layer. The data shows that a common form of weathering that affects many airless bodies like Vesta in the inner solar system helps to keep them looking younger by not aging the outermost layer. Findings described in an upcoming issue of the journal Nature show that data indicates that carbon-rich asteroids have been...
University of Notre Dame Justin Crepp, Freimann Assistant Professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, provided the high-contrast imaging observations that confirmed the first extrasolar planet discovered in a quadruple star system. He is a co-author on a paper about the discovery, “Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System,” recently posted to the open-access arXiv.org, and submitted for publication to The Astrophysical Journal. Crepp’s...
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...
[ Watch the Video: Studying Hubble Data Revives a Zombie Exoplanet ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study suggests that the nearby star Fomalhaut hosts a massive "zombie" exoplanet that was previously thought to not exist, but is back from the dead. A second look at data from the Hubble Space Telescope is reviving the claim that Fomalhaut b is alive, but completely surrounded by dust. Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus,...
[ Watch the Video: Saturn’s Record-Setting Storm ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As the "Perfect Storm" begins to set its place on the East Coast, there has been another massive storm that has taken place, but not on this planet. NASA's Cassini spacecraft tracked the aftermath of a rare massive storm on Saturn, revealing disturbances in the planet's upper atmosphere long after the visible signs of the storm abated. Data from Cassini's composite infrared...
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...
[ Watch the Video: What is Jupiter? ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In ancient Rome, Jupiter was the King of the gods and the god of sky and thunder with his mighty thunderbolt. He would certainly be pleased with the changes occurring on his namesake planet. Jupiter the planet is continually being peppered with small space rocks, the atmosphere is changing colors in wide belts, hotspots are vanishing and reappearing, and clouds are gathering and dissipating over...
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement about the European Southern Observatory's latest exoplanet discovery from NASA's Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, Dr. John Grunsfeld. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "We congratulate the European Southern Observatory team for making this exciting new exoplanet discovery. For astronomers, the search for exoplanets helps us understand our place in the...
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...
