After an epic journey across the breadth of the solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is finally nearing its destination: the Pluto system, a staggering 3 billion miles from Earth. In December, after a journey of nine ...
Space Exploration
May 11, 2015
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(Phys.org)—Astronomers have discovered what appears to be a large asteroid belt around the star Vega, the second brightest star in northern night skies. The scientists used data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ...
Astronomy
Jan 8, 2013
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Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Astronomy
Dec 2, 2011
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An unexpected "heat wave" of 700 degrees Celsius, extending 130,000 kilometers (10 Earth diameters) in Jupiter's atmosphere, has been discovered. James O'Donoghue, of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has ...
Astronomy
Sep 23, 2022
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Researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a two-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat, reported ...
General Physics
Jan 25, 2012
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(Phys.org) —Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, determined the true colour of a planet orbiting another star. If seen up close this planet, known as HD 189733b, would be a deep ...
Astronomy
Jul 11, 2013
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Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island have discovered one of the lowest-mass planets whose images have been directly captured. Not only were they able to measure its mass, but they were also ...
Astronomy
Jun 23, 2023
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Ever since its launch in 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer, keeping an eye on the largely gaseous outer planets and their ever-changing atmospheres. NASA spacecraft missions to ...
Astronomy
Mar 23, 2023
0
35
Imagine yourself at the core of Jupiter, a planet 300 times the mass of Earth. At 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit, you and I might think it's hot in here, but to a physicist it's merely warm - warm dense matter, to be precise, ...
Plasma Physics
Oct 16, 2009
2
0
Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show incredible variation when it comes to size, temperature, ...
Astronomy
Aug 15, 2016
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