Venus is only slightly smaller than the Earth, and so has enjoyed billions of years of a warm heart. But for this planet, sometimes called Earth's sister, that heat has betrayed it. That planet is now wrapped in suffocating ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 26, 2024
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48
We know of Mars as the red planet, for its surface and atmosphere is caked in endless swirling dust of rusted iron, the rusting action provided by the always-eager oxygen. But this was not always so.
Astrobiology
Jan 24, 2024
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36
The Large Interferometer for Exoplanets (LIFE) project is an ambitious plan to build a space telescope with four independent mirrors. The array would allow the individual mirrors to move closer or farther apart, similar to ...
Astrobiology
Jan 23, 2024
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9
In Dante Alighieri's epic poem The Divine Comedy, the famous words "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" adorn the gates of hell. Interestingly enough, Dante's vision of hell is an apt description of what conditions are like ...
Space Exploration
Jan 18, 2024
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62
Astronomers using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have found a brown dwarf (an object more massive than Jupiter but smaller than a star) with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in its upper atmosphere. ...
Astronomy
Jan 10, 2024
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212
The sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 4:55 p.m. EST, on Dec. 31, 2023. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured an image of the event.
Astronomy
Jan 3, 2024
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45
As astronomers have begun to gather data on the atmospheres of planets, we're learning about their compositions and evolution. Thick atmospheres are the easiest to study, but these same thick atmospheres can hide the surface ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 27, 2023
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42
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy—examining the wavelengths ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 18, 2023
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13
In December 2022, NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission observed the dramatic and unexpected "disappearance" of a stream of charged particles constantly emanating off the sun, known as the solar wind. ...
Astronomy
Dec 11, 2023
0
64
The shimmering green, red and purple curtains of the northern and southern lights—the auroras—may be the best-known phenomena lighting up the nighttime sky, but the most mysterious are the mauve and white streaks called ...
Earth Sciences
Dec 9, 2023
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