Planetary Science

Planetary Science

Here are Juno’s first close-ups of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

The Juno spacecraft swooped just 9,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot on July 10. Here are the first pictures.

Planetary Science

Juno will fly a mere 9,000 km above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Juno is about to get up close and personal with Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

Planetary Science

Readers intrigued by Mars’ far-out birth

Readers sent feedback on the Red Planet's formation, jumping genes and more

Planetary Science

The moon might have had a heavy metal atmosphere with supersonic winds

Heat from a glowing infant Earth could have vaporized the moon’s metals into an atmosphere as thick as Mars’, a new simulation shows.

Astronomy

Kepler shows small exoplanets are either super-Earths or mini-Neptunes

The final catalog from the Kepler space telescope splits Earthlike exoplanets into two groups and pinpoints 10 new rocky planets in the habitable zone.

Astronomy

Eclipse watchers catch part of the sun’s surface fleeing to space

A serendipitous eruption during a solar eclipse showed relatively cool blobs of plasma, wrapped in a million-degree flame, streaming from the sun.

Planetary Science

See the latest stunning views of Jupiter

Once every 53 days, NASA’s Juno spacecraft zooms past Jupiter’s cloud tops. A new sequence of images reveals the encounter from Juno’s viewpoint.

Planetary Science

Jupiter’s precocious birth happened in the solar system’s first million years

Jupiter formed within the first million years of the solar system, according to meteorite measurements.

Astronomy

Scalding hot gas giant breaks heat records

KELT 9b’s sun blasts it with so much radiation that the planet’s dayside is hotter than most stars and its atmosphere is being stripped away.

Particle Physics

Readers puzzled by proton’s properties

Readers sent feedback on under-ice greenhouses in the Arctic, the Martian atmosphere and more.

Planetary Science

Why you can hear and see meteors at the same time

People can see and hear meteors simultaneously because of radio waves produced by the descending space rocks.

Planetary Science

Citizen scientists join the search for Planet 9

Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a citizen science project, lets space enthusiasts search for undiscovered objects in the sky, including a hypothesized planet at the far reaches of the solar system.