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 ...
Astronomy
Feb 28, 2020
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811
Scientists have helped solve the mystery of what lies beneath the surface of Neptune – the most distant planet in our solar system. A new study sheds light on the chemical make-up of the planet, which lies around 4.5 billion ...
Astronomy
Aug 11, 2017
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200
Rocky planets are probably a whole lot more common in our galaxy than astronomers previously believed—according to the latest release of Kepler Space Telescope data last week—a scenario that enhances the prospects for ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2017
3
247
A NASA-led and NASA-sponsored study of potential future missions to the mysterious "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune has been released—the first in a series of mission studies NASA will conduct in support of the next ...
Space Exploration
Jun 21, 2017
3
200
As astronomers continue to find more and more planets around stars beyond our own Sun, they are trying to discover patterns and features that indicate what types of planets are likely to form around different kinds of stars. ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2015
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29
It's like something out of an interplanetary chess game. Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about four billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2015
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Exoplanet surveys have discovered the first planets with sizes between 2 and 3.5 Earth radii—slightly smaller than the size of the planet Neptune in our solar system. These planets, dubbed "mini-Neptunes," have been spotted ...
Astronomy
Jan 19, 2015
0
56
(Phys.org)—When astronomers discovered planet GJ 1214b circling a star more than 47 light-years from Earth in 2009, their data presented two possibilities: Either it was a mini-Neptune shrouded in a thick atmosphere of ...
Astronomy
Feb 19, 2013
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(Phys.org)—French researchers Sébastien Charnoz and Aurélien Crida have proposed in a paper published in the journal Science that moons that orbit some of the planets in our solar system came about due to accretion from ...
As the Kepler space telescope continues to search for potentially habitable planets, it also may reveal moons that could host life. Three new simulations will help astronomers identify rocky satellites that could hold water ...
Astronomy
Jan 6, 2012
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