In 1665, astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini observed a massive storm raging on Jupiter. It became known as the Great Red Spot, a swirling oval of clouds that’s almost twice as wide as Earth. New research, however, suggests that the red-hued feature spotted by Cassini is not the same storm we see today.
In his search for giant stars hosting large worlds, Samuel Grunblatt, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, came across a strangely puffy planet that’s smaller, hotter, and older than it’s supposed to be. “We didn’t expect to find any planet that looks like this,” he told Gizmodo.
Astronomer Frank Drake formulated his influential equation in 1961 to estimate the number of civilizations in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us. Our understanding of planetary science has changed a lot since then, leading a team of scientists to propose a pair of important adjustments that produce an…
A newly discovered exoplanet, with its surface temperature estimated to be remarkably temperate, is suddenly one of the most intriguing objects in our immediate celestial neighborhood. This rocky Venus-sized world transits a red dwarf star, offering astronomers the rare opportunity to study whether such planets can…
Around 4.5 billion years ago, Earth and Venus were born in the midst of a chaotic star system. With the neighboring worlds being of the same size and similar structure, it’s believed that both planets likely began with similar amounts of water. Today, however, Venus is a hellish world with intense heat and crushing…
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…
Norman Kuring/NASA/GSFC/Suomi NPP; bgblue; Business Insider
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.
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.
The Webb Space Telescope has spotted something weird: a brown dwarf with what appear to be aurorae, what we Earthlings sometimes call the Northern Lights. What makes the observation particularly surprising is that the brown dwarf doesn’t have a nearby star that could cause such an aurora.
