It’s been 30 years since a NASA spacecraft went to Venus, a yellowish planet 67 million miles from the Sun and 141 million miles from us. Venus is often thought of as a sibling planet to Earth, both being rocky worlds close enough to the Sun to bask in its heat. And yet, at some point in their histories, the two…
An incoming comet recently spotted by telescopes in China and South Africa could be as bright as a planet in the night sky next year, according to astronomers who studied the object.
With its strange rings and tilt, surprising seasonal variations, and 27 moons, Uranus is the solar system’s weirdo planet. The enigmatic ice giant has a lot to teach us, which is why astronomers are clamoring for a mission to explore the planet up close.
Researchers observing a background star pass behind Quaoar, a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, found that the distant object has a ring system unlike any previously found in our solar system.
Astronomical phenomena tend to occur over timespans that dwarf our human scale—a galaxy changes over millions and billions of years, not decades.
On December 12, from 156 miles above the surface of Mars, the HiRise camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a peculiar sight: the face of a bear, peering up from the crust of the Red Planet.
