It’s a dwarf planet with a giant family! Astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope have announced a new moon around distant Pluto, bringing the known count up to 5. The image above, just released by NASA, shows the Pluto system with its newest member, P5. Read more here.
Tag: planet
Is Earth Alive?
Proposed by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 70s, the Gaia theory suggests Earth is a self-supporting singular life form, similar to a cell. The theory claims that, rather than being merely a stage upon which life exists, life — in all forms — works to actively construct an Earthly environment in which it can…
Take a Look at Titan!
Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more “Saturny”.
A Blue Monday on Mercury
This latest image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, now in its extended mission around Mercury, shows a color view of a section of the first planet’s rugged and sun-blasted surface.
Daytime Moon, Hello Venus!
What a weekend for sky gazing! As promised in Friday’s article on Universe Today, Venus was visible during the daylight hours this Saturday, very close to the crescent Moon. If you had clear weather you too may have been able to catch a glimpse of the scene above, photographed from my location in north Texas at…
Hubble Spots Jupiter’s Spooky Northern Lights
Acquired in March 2007, this eerie image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys’s ultraviolet camera show glowing auroral emissions, always present in Jupiter’s polar regions. The aurora is hundreds of kilometers wide and about 250 kilometers above the planet. It is caused by electrically charged particles striking atoms in the upper atmosphere from above, the…
Hello, Earth!
It’s the 2012 version of the “Blue Marble“! Here’s an amazing new high-definition portrait of our planet, made by NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite launched back on October 28. This is a composite image created from multiple scans taken with the satellite’s Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). Suomi NPP is the first satellite designed to collect…
More Evidence for a Wetter, “Volcanier” Mars
Spirit may have settled in for an eternal sleep on Mars but the data she’s sent back is still helping researchers piece together clues for a wetter history of the red planet! The image above, a false-color view from the “Home Plate” region where Spirit now sits, points to a feature geologists call a “bomb sag”….
Why Did Pluto Lose Its Planet Status?
Why isn’t Pluto considered a planet anymore?
Spacecraft Discovers Mercury Truly Is a “Hollowed” Planet
…although not in the way some people mean by the term. 🙂 The latest featured image from NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft shows the central peak of the 78-mile (138-km) – wide crater “Eminescu” surrounded by brightly-colored surface features called “hollows”. Actually tinted a light blue color, hollows may be signs of an erosion process unique to Mercury because of its…
Is Vesta a Planet Among Asteroids?
After nearly 5 months in orbit around Vesta, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has returned some incredibly detailed data about the composition and structure of what was once surely considered an asteroid. But now scientists are starting to have second thoughts about what exactly Vesta is… is it really an asteroid? Or is it more like a…
Pluto Probe Goes Where None Has Gone Before
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft passed a new milestone today, officially becoming the closest spacecraft ever to the distant dwarf planet Pluto! As it continues its trip through interplanetary space, clocking an impressive 35,000 mph (more than twice the speed of the ISS in orbit!) New Horizons is currently in hibernation mode, and has already passed…
Lights in the Dark 