Debris disks around main-sequence stars are tenuous belts of dust thought to be produced when asteroids or other planetesimals collide and fragment. They are common: more than about a quarter of all main-sequence stars have ...
I'm outside at my rural Saskatchewan farm, chatting with my neighbors who I've invited over to appreciate the night sky through my telescope. After exclamations and open-mouthed wonder over Saturn's rings, and light that ...
A new study by University of Maryland astronomers shows that comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), the largest comet ever discovered, was active long before previously thought, meaning the ice within it is vaporizing and forming ...
A new study led by Southwest Research Institute determined the brightness of the galactic Lyman-alpha background using a SwRI-developed instrument aboard NASA's Kuiper Belt space probe, New Horizons.
On October 19, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our solar system. Designated 1I/2017 U1 ′Oumuamua, this object confounded astronomers who could not determine ...
From Mercury to the depths of the distant Kuiper Belt, there aren't many unexplored corners of the solar system out there. One class of object, however, remains to be visited: the transitional Centaurs out beyond the orbit ...
Young planetary systems generally experience extreme growing pains, as infant bodies collide and fuse to form progressively larger planets. In our own solar system, the Earth and moon are thought to be products of this type ...
Giant planets like Saturn don't just tilt over all by themselves; something has to knock them over, or tug on them gravitationally, to push them off axis. Scientists expect that when new planets are born, they form with almost ...
How will the solar system die? It's a hugely important question that researchers have considered deeply, using our knowledge of physics to create complex theoretical models. We know that the sun will eventually become a "white ...
Deep in the solar system, between Jupiter and Neptune, lurk thousands of small chunks of ice and rock. Occasionally, one of them will bump into Jupiter's orbit, get caught and flung into the inner solar system—towards the ...
