On Oct. 8-9, European sky watchers were amazed when a flurry of faint meteors filled the sky at midnight. It was an outburst of the annual Draconids meteor shower. Turns out, that outburst was just the tip of the iceberg. Computer models show that Earth narrowly missed two streams of comet debris that would have…
Pluto is the second-most complex, interesting planet in our solar system behind Earth The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research from the University of Central Florida. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union, a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to…
Unique in the solar system, scientists consider the possibility that we are catching Jupiter in the middle of a magnetic reversal NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered something extraordinary about Jupiter. There is an extra magnetic pole near the giant planet’s equator, dubbed “The Great Blue Spot” by researchers who identified it. Jupiter’s unexpected magnetic morphology…
WASHINGTON — Astronomers using the Hubble Space telescope have taken a series of images featuring the fluttering auroras at the north pole of Saturn. The observations were taken in ultraviolet light and the resulting images provide astronomers with the most comprehensive picture so far of Saturn’s northern aurora. In 2017, over a period of seven…
From NASA JPL: Water Ice confirmed at the moon’s poles In the darkest and coldest parts of its polar regions, a team of scientists has directly observed definitive evidence of water ice on the Moon’s surface. These ice deposits are patchily distributed and could possibly be ancient. At the southern pole, most of the ice…
A bizarre rogue planet without a star is roaming the Milky Way just 20 light-years from the Sun. And according to a recently published study in The Astrophysical Journal, this strange, nomadic world has an incredibly powerful magnetic field that is some 4 million times stronger than Earth’s. Furthermore, it generates spectacular auroras that would put our own northern lights…
From MIT: New data may explain star’s mysterious dimming. For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers’ attention. Every few decades, the star’s light has faded briefly before brightening again. In…
A comet that could become visible to the naked eye in August has just exploded in brightness. Amateur astronomer Michael Jäger of Austria reports that Comet PANSTARRS (C/2017 S3) brightened 16-fold during the late hours of July 2nd, abruptly increasing in magnitude from +12 to +9. He took this picture of the comet’s expanding green atmosphere…
A martian dust storm that started in late May, silencing NASA’s Opportunity rover, has now wrapped itself around the entirety of Mars, radically transforming the appearance of the Red Planet. Amateur astronomers are taking pictures of the storm through backyard telescopes, and even naked-eye observers say they can see changes in the planet’s color. …
UCR researchers have identified 121 giant planets that may have habitable moons RIVERSIDE, Calif.– We’ve all heard about the search for life on other planets, but what about looking on other moons? In a paper published Wednesday (June 13) in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers at the University of California, Riverside and the University of Southern Queensland…