Related topics: solar system · planets · orbit · jupiter · saturn

Dwarf planet mysteries beckon to New Horizons

(PhysOrg.com) -- At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in flight longer ...

The moons of Neptune

Neptune, that icy gas giant that is the eight planet from our Sun, was discovered in 1846 by two astronomers – Urbain Le Verrier and Johann Galle. In keeping with the convention of planetary nomenclature, Neptune was named ...

The Stars My Destination

The Voyager spacecraft are now in the outermost layer of the heliosphere, traveling toward interstellar space - the first man-made spacecraft to travel such a vast distance from Earth.

Clocking Neptune's spin

(PhysOrg.com) -- By tracking atmospheric features on Neptune, a UA planetary scientist has accurately determined the planet's rotation, a feat that had not been previously achieved for any of the gas planets in our solar ...

Astronomers discover five new Neptune trojans

(Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers led by Hsing-Wen Lin of the National Central University in Taiwan has detected five new so-called "Neptune trojans" – minor bodies sharing the same orbit as the planet Neptune. ...

What is the Kuiper Belt?

Dr. Mike Brown is a professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech. He's best known as the man who killed Pluto, thanks to his team's discovery of Eris and other Kuiper Belt Objects. We asked him to help us explain this unusual ...

The Edges of the Solar System

(PhysOrg.com) -- The solar system does not end abruptly past the planets. Beyond the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet (it orbits the sun at a distance of 30 AU, where one AU is the average distance of the earth from ...

Examining ice giants with NASA's Webb telescope

Far-flung Uranus and Neptune—the ice giants of our solar system—are as mysterious as they are distant. Soon after its launch in 2021, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will change that by unlocking secrets of the atmospheres ...

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