When spacecraft return to Earth, they don't need to shed all their velocity by firing retro-rockets. Instead, they use the atmosphere as a brake to slow down for a soft landing. Every planet in the solar system except Mercury ...
Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, orbits in the outer solar system, about two billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) from Earth. It is an enormous world—quadruple the diameter of Earth, with 15 times the mass and ...
Stars are gravitationally fastened to their galaxies and move in concert with their surroundings. But sometimes, something breaks the bond. If a star gets too close to a supermassive black hole, for example, the black hole ...
The James Webb Space Telescope observed the exoplanet WASP-80 b as it passed in front of and behind its host star, revealing spectra indicative of an atmosphere containing methane gas and water vapor. While water vapor has ...
The unique atmospheric compositions of "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune were recreated to simulate a plunge deep within them, using suitably adapted European shocktubes and plasma facilities.
The presence of an infrared aurora on the cold, outer planet of Uranus has been confirmed for the first time by University of Leicester astronomers.
Pluto with a super-cryovolcano? Why not! All the elements are there, just not in the way we normally think of volcanoes. And cryovolcanoes are the reason why Pluto's surface looks the way it does. A recent research paper ...
The Kuiper Belt, the vast region at the edge of our solar system populated by countless icy objects, is a treasure trove of scientific discoveries. The detection and characterization of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), sometimes ...
The afterglow of a massive collision between two giant planets may have been detected for the first time. The wreckage of the collision could eventually cool and form an entirely new planet. If the observation is confirmed, ...
The outer planets of our solar system, Uranus and Neptune, are water-rich gas giants. These planets have extreme pressures 2 million times the Earth's atmosphere. They also have interiors as hot as the surface of the sun. ...
