Why Jupiter doesn't have rings like Saturn

Because it's bigger, Jupiter ought to have larger, more spectacular rings than Saturn has. But new UC Riverside research shows Jupiter's massive moons prevent that vision from lighting up the night sky.

Hubble takes a grand tour of the solar system

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has completed its annual grand tour of the outer Solar System. This is the realm of the giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—extending as far as 30 times the distance ...

First X-rays from Uranus discovered

Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system.

Uranian moons in new light

More than 230 years ago astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus and two of its moons. Using the Herschel Space Observatory, a group of astronomers led by Örs H. Detre of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy ...

Astronomers see 'warm' glow of Uranus' rings

The rings of Uranus are invisible to all but the largest telescopes—they weren't even discovered until 1977—but they're surprisingly bright in new heat images of the planet taken by two large telescopes in the high deserts ...

What does Uranus sound like?

Sometimes kids ask really simple questions – and parents have no idea what the answers are. When one of our colleagues was asked what it sounds like on the planet Uranus, she was stumped. And so were we! So we asked an ...

A big space crash likely made Uranus lopsided

Uranus is a lopsided oddity, the only planet to spin on its side. Scientists now think they know how it got that way: It was pushed over by a rock at least twice as big as Earth.

Encouraging prospects for moon hunters

Astrophysicists of the University of Zürich, ETH Zürich and the NCCR PlanetS show how the icy moons of Uranus were born. Their result suggests that such potentially habitable worlds are much more abundant in the Universe ...

Image: Polar lights on Uranus

On the first day of the 15th annual European Space Weather Week, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope fittingly shows a striking occurrence of celestial weather in the outer reaches of the Solar System: an ...

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