Related topics: earth

The rotation of Venus

Venus is covered in a thick layer of clouds, one reason that it appears so bright in the sky. Ancient astronomers had a good idea of what (since Copernicus) we know as its orbital period; the modern measurement is that Venus ...

Scientists planning now for asteroid flyby a decade away

On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky, getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little ...

Satellites see unprecedented Greenland ice sheet surface melt

For several days this month, Greenland's surface ice cover melted over a larger area than at any time in more than 30 years of satellite observations. Nearly the entire ice cover of Greenland, from its thin, low-lying coastal ...

Understanding a satellite's death spiral

Down on the ground, death equals stillness—but not in space. Abandoned satellites are prone to tumble in unpredictable ways, and an ESA project with the Astronomical Institute of the University of Bern sought to better ...

French earthquake fault mapped

This week, southeast France was hit by a magnitude 5 earthquake with tremors felt between Lyon and Montélimar. The Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar mission has been used to map the way the ground shifted as a result of the quake.

page 2 from 6