It's tiny, but it's there. By now, we're all used to seeing amazing photos of Jupiter courtesy of NASA's Juno mission on a routine basis. Many of these are processed by volunteer "citizen scientists," and they show the swirling ...
Planetary Sciences
May 16, 2024
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37
The TRAPPIST-1 solar system generated a swell of interest when it was observed several years ago. In 2016, astronomers using the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) at La Silla Observatory in Chile ...
Planetary Sciences
May 15, 2024
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42
UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane had to double-check his calculations. He wasn't sure the planet he was studying could be as extreme as it seemed.
Planetary Sciences
May 9, 2024
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289
While the upcoming total solar eclipse is a special moment to reflect on our place in the universe, scientists have been studying the birth of the sun and the formation of our solar system for a long time.
Astronomy
Apr 8, 2024
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37
The unique two thin rings around the Centaur Chariklo could be shaped by an even smaller satellite. Chariklo is a Centaur, which are small bodies similar to asteroids in size but to comets in composition, that revolve around ...
Astronomy
Feb 6, 2024
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113
Trappist-1 is a fascinating exoplanetary system. Seven worlds orbiting a red dwarf star just 40 light-years away. All of the worlds are similar to Earth in mass and size, and three or four of them are potentially habitable. ...
Astrobiology
Feb 5, 2024
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61
Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances—in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to orbit their suns have no ...
Planetary Sciences
Feb 3, 2024
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89
Proxima Centauri b is the closest exoplanet to Earth. It is an Earth-mass world right in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star just 4 light-years from Earth. It receives about 65% of the energy Earth gets from the sun, and ...
Astronomy
Jan 24, 2024
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83
Astronomers have discovered a pair of exoplanets orbiting an M dwarf star, one of which is the coldest M dwarf planet found by the TESS satellite observatory, making it accessible for follow-up studies of its atmosphere. ...
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy—examining the wavelengths ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 18, 2023
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