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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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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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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Planet Earth is full of some truly awe-inspiring spectacles, but few are as intriguing as sprites, which are officially known as a transient luminous event (TLE) and consist of large-scale electric discharges that shoot upward ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 5, 2023
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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 ...
Astronomy
Nov 28, 2023
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This newly released image from the NASA Hubble Space Telescope shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released in honor of Jupiter reaching opposition, which occurs when the planet and the ...
Astronomy
Nov 3, 2023
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With thousands of known exoplanets and tens of thousands likely to be discovered in the coming decades, it could be only a matter of time before we discover a planet with life. The trick is proving it. So far the focus has ...
Astrobiology
Oct 31, 2023
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At their closest point in orbit, Earth and Jupiter are separated by almost 600 million kilometers. At the time of writing, five months after launch, Juice has already traveled 370 million kilometers, yet in time it's only ...
Space Exploration
Sep 20, 2023
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NASA is listening for any peep from Voyager 2 after losing contact with the spacecraft billions of miles away.
Space Exploration
Jul 31, 2023
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,We all used to think there were nine planets. But in 2006, the solar system was left with only eight planets, when Pluto was no longer classified as such. But is it still possible there is a planet out there beyond Neptune—possibly ...
Astronomy
Jun 15, 2023
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