Discovered in June 2005, distant Pluto’s outermost moon Hydra it thought to have formed during the same collision four billion years ago that created the Pluto-Charon system that we see today. Yet despite its age this 31-mile (50-km) -long moon appears remarkably clean and bright, as witnessed by New Horizons during its close pass through the Pluto system in July 2015.
Tag: space
Enceladus’ Jets: the Farther They Are, the Harder They Spray
A crowning achievement of the Cassini mission to Saturn is the discovery of water vapor jets spraying out from Enceladus‘ southern pole. First witnessed by the spacecraft in 2005, these icy geysers propelled the little 320-mile-wide moon into the scientific spotlight. After 22 flybys of Enceladus during its nearly twelve years in orbit around Saturn, Cassini has gathered enough data to determine…
A New Moon is Discovered in the Solar System
Turns out there is something new under the Sun, at least to us; on Tuesday, April 26 scientists announced the discovery of a new moon in the Solar System—but it’s not around Earth, or Jupiter, or Saturn, or any of the planets that you’ve long been familiar with. This new moon is orbiting a distant world even…
Ride Shotgun With John Young During His Apollo 16 Grand Prix
Take a ride across the Moon with Apollo 16 commander John Young in this video, a stabilized version of NASA 16mm film footage captured during the first EVA of the mission on April 21, 1972. In what’s called the “lunar Grand Prix” Young pilots the Lunar Roving Vehicle, or LRV, across the dusty terrain of the…
Planet Nine May Have Once Been an Exoplanet
It hasn’t even been found yet (they’re still working on that) but the recently-announced Planet Nine is already spurring discussion amongst the world’s astronomers. One of the recent topics surrounding this alleged new planet is (again, besides where it’s hiding) how it formed and how it got into the incredibly distant orbit it’s thought to be…
Pluto’s Frozen Lake Hints at a Warmer Past
Hockey fans take note: future visitors to Pluto may want to bring along their sticks and skates—the distant planet may harbor some pristine ice in the form of frozen ponds and lakes! (NASA might have to work on a lightweight, collapsible Zamboni first though.)
Ceres’ Bright Spot Looks Like a Giant Zit
After more than a dozen years of head-scratching we finally have our first really good look at the weird bright spot on Ceres, thanks to NASA’s Dawn spacecraft and its low-altitude mapping orbit (aka LAMO) around the dwarf planet. Appearing from 240 miles up as a dome covered in cracks and rising from the surrounding darker…
Ceres Displays Unexpected Flare-ups in Brightness to Ground-Based Survey
The evaporation or eruption of volatiles on Ceres could be causing unexpected flare-ups in brightness
The Scale of the Solar System With a Soccer Ball, a Drone, Pin Heads, and Planet Nine
I love models that demonstrate the incredible size and space of the Solar System, very much so because many illustrations and diagrams fail to portray it accurately (and for very good reason…it’s enormous.) The most recent is shown here, enthusiastically created and narrated by former NASA engineer Mark Rober. This particular demonstration is unique in…
Pencil This In: Mercury’s Surface is Darkened by Graphite
Monochromatic and covered in craters, Mercury may outwardly resemble our Moon but the similarities abruptly end there. Ever since the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury in 2011, and indeed even since Mariner 10‘s flyby in 1974, peculiar “dark spots” observed on the planet’s surface have intrigued scientists as to their composition and origin. Now, thanks to high-resolution spectral…
Surprise! Pluto May have Clouds
We could be calling it Cloudgate—”leaked” information from internal emails identifying structures in Pluto’s already hazy atmosphere that could very well be clouds, based on a March 4 article in New Scientist. The image above shows sections of a New Horizons image attached to an email sent by SwRI scientist John Spencer, in which he noted particularly…
NASA Astronaut Returns to Earth After Historic “Year in Space”
With a smile and an energetic thumbs-up, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly exited the Soyuz TMA-18M capsule shortly after landing on the remote steppe of Kazakhstan at 10:26 p.m. Central time March 1, 2016. It was the return of the Expedition 46 crew, which included Russian cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Mikhail Kornienko, the latter of whom shared…
Lights in the Dark 