The Kuiper belt—the region beyond the orbit of Neptune inhabited by a number of small bodies of rock and ice—hides many clues about the early days of the Solar System. According to the standard picture of Solar System ...
Astronomy
Jan 17, 2014
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After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world's most advanced instrument for directly imaging and analyzing planets around other stars is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds.
Astronomy
Jan 7, 2014
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An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet ...
Astronomy
Dec 5, 2013
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Our solar system hosts a cornucopia of worlds, from the hellfire of Venus to the frozen plains of Mars to the mighty winds of Uranus. In that range, the Earth stands alone, with no planet coming close to its life-friendly ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Planets are formed in disks of gas and dust around nascent stars. Now, combined observations with the compound telescope ALMA and the Herschel Space Observatory have produced a rare view of a planetary construction ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2013
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A new study on magnetic fields around extrasolar giant planets sheds first light on the magnetic environment of extrasolar moons. The work, authored by René Heller of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University ...
Astronomy
Sep 6, 2013
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University of British Columbia astronomers have discovered the first Trojan asteroid sharing the orbit of Uranus, and believe 2011 QF99 is part of a larger-than-expected population of transient objects temporarily trapped ...
Astronomy
Aug 29, 2013
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"Space is Big. Really Big." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pretty much nailed space with those five words. And space is so really big that our earthly measures of distance struggle.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2013
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Using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii, an international team of astronomers has imaged a giant planet around the bright star GJ 504. Several times the mass of Jupiter and similar in size, the new world, ...
Astronomy
Aug 6, 2013
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Principal Investigator George Ricker likes to call it the "Goldilocks orbit"—it's not too close to Earth and her Moon, and it's not too far. In fact, it's just right.
Space Exploration
Jul 31, 2013
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