From NASA: Saturn’s north polar region displays its beautiful bands and swirls, which somewhat resemble the brushwork in a watercolor painting. Each latitudinal band represents air flowing at different speeds, and clouds at different heights, compared to neighboring bands. Where they meet and flow past each other, the bands’ interactions produce many eddies and swirls. Read More
Tag: Astronomy
Studies Find Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars
Supermassive black holes, with their immense gravitational pull, are notoriously good at clearing out their immediate surroundings by eating nearby objects. When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole, the stellar material gets stretched and compressed — or “spaghettified” — as the black hole swallows it. A black hole destroying a Read More
Pluto ‘Paints’ its Largest Moon Red
In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA’s approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they’d never seen anything like it elsewhere in our solar system, and they couldn’t wait to get the story behind it. Over the past year, after Read More
Cassini Begins Epic Final Year at Saturn
After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings and moons, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is planned for September 2017, but not before the spacecraft completes a daring two-part endgame. Beginning on November 30, Cassini’s orbit will send the spacecraft Read More
Jupiter’s North Pole Unlike Anything Encountered in Solar System
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole, taken during the spacecraft’s first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system’s gas-giant planets. Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital Read More
‘WT1190F’ Safely Reenters Earth’s Atmosphere, Provides Research Opportunity
Just after 1:18 AM EST (6:18 AM UTC) on Friday, Nov. 13 an object tagged as WT1190F reentered Earth’s atmosphere as predicted above the Indian Ocean, just off the southern tip of Sri Lanka. The object – most likely man-made space debris from some previous lunar or interplanetary mission – burned up on reentry and Read More
NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers Bigger, Older Cousin to Earth
NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another “Earth.” The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the Read More