Micrometer-scale dust particles from protoplanetary disks, or sites around stars with particles and hydrogen and/or other gasses, aggregate to form planetesimals, or kilometer-scale building blocks of planets. Planetesimals, in turn, merge due to mutual gravity. Credit: JAMSTEC Microparticle dust aggregates, which are thought to play a role in the formation of new planets, are less…
Category: Planets
New 'super-Earth' orbiting M-dwarf star discovered
The TESS light curve folded in phase with the time in hours from mid-transit of TOI-1680 b. Credit: Ghachoui et al, 2023 An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of a new “super-Earth” exoplanet with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). The newfound alien world, designated TOI-1680 b, is about 50% larger than the…
Asteroid Ryugu's anhydrous ingredients come from afar, study suggests
A: Ryugu as seen by Hayabusa2. B: The “stone” C0002 collected by Hayabusa2. C: Electron microscope image of a section of C0002. D: Infrared image with anhydrous clasts. E: Spectra of a grain rich in amorphous silicates, of a cometary particle, of the primitive asteroid Hektor and of comet Hale-Bopp. Credit: IAS Orsay Infrared spectra…
Does this exoplanet have a 'sibling' sharing the same orbit?
This image, taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, shows the young planetary system PDS 70, located nearly 400 light-years away from Earth. The system features a star at its center, around which the planet PDS 70 b (highlighted with a solid yellow circle) is orbiting. On the…
NASA's Juno is getting ever closer to Jupiter's moon Io
From left, Ganymede, Europa, and Io – the three Jovian moons that NASA’s Juno mission has flown past – as well as Jupiter are shown in a photo illustration created from data collected by the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager. Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Kevin M. Gill (CC BY); Thomas Thomopoulos (CC BY) The spinning,…
New study reveals NASA's Roman could find 400 Earth-mass rogue planets
This artist’s concept shows an ice-encrusted, Earth-mass rogue planet drifting through space alone. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center New research by scientists from NASA and Japan’s Osaka University suggests that rogue planets—worlds that drift through space untethered to a star—far outnumber planets that orbit stars. The results imply that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space…
Greenhouse gas supplement increases warming and alters circulation patterns on Earth and Earth-like exoplanets
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the study of exoplanetary atmospheres and their potential habitability reached new heights. A team of researchers led by Dr. Assaf Hochman from the Institute of Earth Sciences at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Dr. Thaddeus D. Komacek from The University of Maryland,…
Using cosmic weather to study which worlds could support life
Spectral S/N comparison between ESO’s ELT spectroscopic ETC and Imber using the same methodology. For comparison, a 1500 K object with an apparent J magnitude of 15 was used with a 300 s exposure. The spectral S/N were output in the L band to demonstrate Imber’s ability to scale apparent magnitudes based on input spectra…
Research team identifies giant swirling waves at the edge of Jupiter's magnetosphere
An SwRI-led team identified intermittent evidence of Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, giant swirling waves, at the boundary between Jupiter’s magnetosphere and the solar wind that fills interplanetary space, modeled here by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research scientists in a 2017 GRL paper. Credit: UCAR/Zhang, et.al. A team led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and The University of…
First BepiColombo flyby of Mercury finds electron rain triggers X-ray auroras
Artist’s representation of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission flying through precipitating electrons that can trigger X-ray auroras on the surface of Mercury. Credit: Thibaut Roger/Europlanet. BepiColombo, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission, has revealed how electrons raining down onto the surface of Mercury can trigger high-energy auroras. The mission,…