Planetary Science

  1. 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.

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  2. 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.

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  3. Planetary Science

    Readers intrigued by Mars’ far-out birth

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

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  4. 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.

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  5. 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.

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  6. 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.

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  7. 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.

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  8. 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.

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  9. 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.

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  10. Particle Physics

    Readers puzzled by proton’s properties

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

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  11. 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.

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  12. 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.

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