Tag: solar system
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Neptune isn’t as blue as we thought it was
[ad_1] The original Voyager 2 photo of Neptune (left) and the reprocessed image from the new study (right) Patrick Irwin Neptune’s true colour is a pale greenish-blue similar to that of Uranus, contrary to popular images that show it to be a much deeper shade of blue. NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the outer…
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Extreme close-up of Jupiter’s moon Io captured by Juno spacecraft
[ad_1] This image of Io was captured by the Juno spacecraft NASA/SwRI/MSSS We have just had our closest look at Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io for decades, thanks to NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which passed the moon on 30 December. Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, has been taking increasingly close images of Io in…
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Moons around Uranus may suddenly develop atmospheres in the spring
[ad_1] Uranus’s moon Miranda NASA/JPL/USGS The moons of Uranus may have short-lived atmospheres every time the seasons change. The seasons there are so intense that these tenuous atmospheres, called exospheres, could exist briefly twice every Uranian year before freezing and falling back down to the surface. Uranus’s poles are extremely tilted with respect to the…
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Stolen planet could be hiding on the edge of our solar system
[ad_1] When the sun was young, it may have stolen a planet from another nearby star – meaning an exoplanet could be waiting on the outer edges of the solar system for us to discover [ad_2] Source link
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Strange alien worlds suggest Earth could survive the death of the sun
[ad_1] MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY IT ALL seemed so simple when we knew the date of Earth’s demise. In 5 billion years from now, so the story went, the solar system will have dramatically transformed. Instead of being the benign presence we are used to, the sun will have ballooned into a giant, hundreds of…
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Passing star could fling Earth out past Pluto into the Oort cloud
[ad_1] Could Earth end up in the Oort cloud? Shutterstock / Dotted Yeti If a passing star came near the solar system, Earth would probably be fine – but there is a small chance our entire world could get thrown to the outer reaches of the solar system, crash into another planet or even get…
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Can we smash together all of the asteroids to build a new planet?
[ad_1] Let’s be honest: the asteroid belt is a bit of a mess. It is full of big rocks hurtling around at high speeds, occasionally getting tossed towards assorted planets, and generally causing a ruckus. On this episode of Dead Planets Society, our hosts Chelsea Whyte and Leah Crane have decided to embark on a…
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The sun is smaller than we thought it was
[ad_1] The sun isn’t quite as big as we thought, so may release solar flares differently to how we expect NASA Our sun is fractionally smaller than it seems, which could change our understanding of its internal structure and behaviour. Historically, astronomers have estimated the sun’s size by measuring the part that emits light, called…