Planets/Moons

Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team. This latest image of Jupiter, taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on 25 August 2020, was…

Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020, was captured…

An international team of researchers has found that some of the oldest terrain on Venus, known as tesserae, have layering that seems consistent with volcanic activity. The finding could provide insights into the enigmatic planet's…

New book illustrates up-to-date findings in cosmology and exobiologyCredit: World Scientific In March 1995, Ben Zuckerman and Matt Malkan hosted a memorable Symposium at UCLA, on "The Origin and Evolution of the Universe". It…

Credit: Vanderburg et al. 2020 An international team of astronomers led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including NASA co-authors, and Thomas G. KAYE from HKU's Laboratory for Space Research (LSR), and the Raemor Vista…

Credit: ESA After contributing to Rosetta Mission, in 2024 Politecnico di Milano will be back to deep space. That year ESA, the European Space Agency, will launch the Hera spacecraft towards binary asteroid Didymos, the smallest…

ITHACA, N.Y. - When stars like our sun die, all that remains is an exposed core - a white dwarf. A planet orbiting a white dwarf presents a promising opportunity to determine if life can survive the death of its star, according to Cornell…

MADISON - Thanks to a bevy of telescopes in space and on Earth -- and even a pair of amateur astronomers in Arizona -- a University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomer and his colleagues have discovered a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting at…

Credit: University of Kansas / KU News Service LAWRENCE -- A University of Kansas astronomer played a key role on the team that today announced the first-ever discovery of a planet orbiting a white dwarf. The finding, published in…

Astronomers detect first-of-its-kind exoplanet around dead starCredit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. Pollard For the first time, an intact, giant exoplanet has been discovered orbiting close to a white dwarf…

Stellar chemical compositions used as proxy for potentially habitable systemsCredit: NASA/JPL-Caltech SAN ANTONIO -- Sept. 16, 2020 -- A Southwest Research Institute scientist has identified stellar phosphorus as a probable marker…

ITHACA, N.Y. - In a little more than a decade, samples of rover-scooped Martian soil will rocket to Earth. While scientists are eager to study the red planet's soils for signs of life, researchers must ponder a considerable new…

How -- and when -- a star produces planets is a question that has puzzled scientists for more than 200 years and is at the heart of the birth of our solar system. WASHINGTON, September 15, 2020 -- Four-hundred fifty light-years from Earth,…

A step forward to understand biomarker moleculeCredit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calçada & NASA/JPL/Caltech An international team of astronomers detected phosphine (PH3) in the atmosphere of Venus. They studied the origin of…

A planet observed crossing in front of, or transiting, a low-mass star has been determined to be about the size of Jupiter. While hundreds of Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered orbiting larger sun-like stars, it is rare to see…

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/L. Calçada & NASA/JPL/Caltech "When we got the first hints of phosphine in Venus's spectrum, it was a shock!", says team leader Jane Greaves of Cardiff University in the UK, who first spotted signs of…

Credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / L. Calçada & NASA / JPL / Caltech An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, today announced the discovery of a rare molecule - phosphine - in…

The gravitational push and pull by Jupiter's moons could account for more warming than the gas giant Jupiter alone Jupiter's moons are hot. Well, hotter than they should be, for being so far from the sun. In a process called tidal…

Credit: @Michele Ceriotti, EPFL The hydrogen atom, with its single proton orbited by a single electron, is arguably the simplest material out there. Elemental hydrogen can nonetheless exhibit extremely complex behavior--at megabar…

Credit: Scott Lucchini MADISON, Wis. -- The Milky Way is not alone in its neighborhood. It has captured smaller galaxies in its orbit, and the two largest are known as the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, visible as twin dusty…