STEVE, a strange ribbon of purple and green haze discovered by citizen scientists in 2016, just got even weirder. While looking through archival data, a team of scientists discovered that the aurora-like phenomenon has a secret twin moving in the opposite direction.
The Sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and around three trillion comets and icy bodies. Although not all objects of the solar system are as well known as Earth, Jupiter, or other celestial bodies with main character energy, they still make up a valuable part…
Do we live in an unusual star system? Astronomers have been trying to figure out if the Solar System is unique compared to other stars and their orbiting planets, and they just took a major step towards answering the longstanding cosmic mystery.
Conspiracy theorists on social media have been busy at work peddling their latest conclusion: The magnificent auroras seen over swaths of four different continents over the weekend were caused by a University of Alaska program that studies the ionosphere. Which, of course, is pure nonsense.
By now, I’m assuming that we’ve made our way through all eight episodes of the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The 3 Body Problem (and by we, I mean sci-fi nerds). The series is packed with science—much of it way over the top—but it grounds itself in quantum mechanics and astrophysics.
WASP-76b is a strange world. Located several hundred light-years away, the Jupiter-like planet is tidally locked to its star, has scorching temperatures, and rains molten iron. Recent observations of the hot gas giant reveal it may even have a rainbow-like optical phenomenon that’s only been observed on Earth and…
Astronomers found a new moon orbiting Uranus, as well as two around Neptune. The tiny satellites appeared as faint specks in the outer reaches of the solar system following hours of ground-based observations.
While journeying through the far reaches of the solar system, the New Horizons probe picked up a dusty trail of icy fragments that may indicate that the Kuiper Belt—home to former planet Pluto and countless other objects—is way bigger than we thought.
An odd little moon that orbits closely to Saturn just revealed its biggest mystery: a hidden ocean that lies beneath its heavily cratered surface.
A previously unknown satellite may be shaping the rings of Chariklo, a petite body that orbits the Sun between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, according to a team of astronomers that recently simulated the rings’ dynamics.
