Atmosphere Archives

February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 by Evan Gough

Strange Winds Blow Through this Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

Tylos (or WASP-121b) is a gaseous, giant exoplanet located some 900 light-years away in the constellation Puppis. Using the ESPRESSO instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), scientists have been able to probe into its atmosphere, revealing its 3D structure and three distinct layers. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Some exoplanets have characteristics totally alien to our Solar System. Hot Jupiters are one such type. They can have orbital periods of less than 10 days and surface temperatures that can climb to well over 4,000 K (3,730 °C or 6,740 °F). Unlike any planets in our system, they’re usually tidally locked.

Astronomers probed the atmosphere of one hot Jupiter and found some strange winds blowing.

February 13, 2025February 13, 2025 by Evan Gough

Curiosity’s Other Important Job: Studying Martian Clouds

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this feather-shaped iridescent cloud just after sunset on Jan. 27, 2023. Studying the colors in iridescent clouds tells scientists something about particle size within the clouds and how they grow over time. These clouds were captured as part of a seasonal imaging campaign to study noctilucent, or “night-shining” clouds. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

MSL Curiosity is primarily a rockhound. It’s at Gale Crater, examining the rocks there and on Mt. Sharp, which sits in the middle of the crater and rises 5.5 km above the crater floor. But Curiosity is also a skywatcher, and its primary camera, Mastcam, was built with Martian clouds in mind.

February 11, 2025February 11, 2025 by Evan Gough

Temperamental Stars are Messing With Our Exoplanet Efforts

'Temperamental' stars that brighten and dim over a matter of hours or days may be distorting our view of thousands of distant planets, suggests a new study led by UCL researchers. Image Credit: University College London

We have the transit method to thank for the large majority of the exoplanets we’ve discovered. When an exoplanet transits its star, the dip in starlight tells astronomers that a planet is present. Analyzing the light can tell them about the planet’s size and atmospheric properties. However, a star’s surface isn’t always uniformly heated. There can be hotter, brighter spots and colder, dimmer spots that change over time.

New research says these temperamental stars are distorting our understanding of exoplanets.

January 30, 2025January 30, 2025 by Evan Gough

How Hydrogen Kept Early Mars Warm

An artist's illustration of an ancient Mars, flush with oceans, clouds and life. Image Credit: Kevin Gill.

Mars haunts us as a vision of a planet gone wrong. It was once warm and wet, with rivers flowing across its surface and (potentially) simple life residing in its water bodies. Now it’s dry and freezing.

Could Earth suffer this fate? Are there innumerable other worlds throughout the Universe that were habitable for a period of time before becoming uninhabitable?

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 by Evan Gough

How Well Could Earth Life Survive on Exoplanets

An artist's illustration of TOI 700d, an Earth-size exoplanet that TESS found in its star's habitable zone. Image Credit: NASA

Astronomers have found some pretty wild exoplanets. Some are balls of lava the temperature of hell, one is partially made of diamond, and another may rain molten iron. However, not all exoplanets are this extreme. Some are rocky, roughly Earth-sized worlds in the habitable zones of their stars.

Could simple Earth life survive on some of these less extreme worlds?

December 18, 2024December 18, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Drone Test Flights Are Being Tested for Flights on Alien Worlds

An atmospheric probe model attached upside down to a quad rotor remotely piloted aircraft ascends with the Moon visible on Oct. 22, 2024. The quad rotor aircraft released the probe above Rogers Dry Lake, a flight area adjacent NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. The probe was designed and built at the center. Credit : NASA/Steve Freeman

We’ve already seen the success of the Ingenuity probe on Mars. The first aircraft to fly on another world set off on its maiden voyage in April 2021 and has now completed 72 flights. Now a team of engineers are taking the idea one step further and investigating ways that drones can be released from satellites in orbit and explore the atmosphere without having to land. The results are positive and suggest this could be a cost effective way to explore alien atmospheres.

November 20, 2024November 22, 2024 by Evan Gough

Uranus is Getting Colder and Now We Know Why

This zoomed-in image of Uranus, captured by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) Feb. 6, 2023, reveals stunning views of the planet’s rings. The planet's upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, New research has an explanation. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI).

Uranus is an oddball among the Solar System’s planets. While most planets’ axis of rotation is perpendicular to their orbital plane, Uranus has an extreme tilt angle of 98 degrees. It’s flopped over on its side, likely from an ancient collision. It also has a retrograde rotation, opposite of the other planets.

The ice giant also has an unusual relationship with the Sun that sets it apart from other planets.

November 16, 2024November 16, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Millions of Phones Could Map the Earth’s Ionosphere

Ionospheric VTEC from phones during a geomagnetic storm

We are all familiar with the atmosphere of the Earth and part of this, the ionosphere, is a layer of weakly ionized plasma. It extends from 50 to 1,500 km above the planet. It’s a diffuse layer but sufficient to interfere with satellite communications and navigation systems too. A team of researchers have come up with an intriguing idea to utilise millions of mobile phones to help map the ionosphere by relying on their GPS antennas.

November 13, 2024November 13, 2024 by Evan Gough

Lessons From Ancient Earth’s Atmosphere: From Hostile to Hospitable

Earth's ancient atmosphere was much different than now. How did it transition from hostile to hospitable? If scientists can figure that out, they'll be better able to understand exoplanets and their atmospheres. Image Credit: Tohoku University

Will we ever understand how life got started on Earth? We’ve learned much about Earth’s long, multi-billion-year history, but a detailed understanding of how the planet’s atmospheric chemistry evolved still eludes us. At one time, Earth was atmospherically hostile, and its transition from that state to a planet teeming with life followed a complex path.

November 11, 2024November 11, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Good News, the Ozone Layer Hole is Continuing to Shrink

The area of depleted ozone over the Antarctic ranked the seventh smallest since recovery began in 1992.

Climate change is a huge topic and often debated across the world. We continue to burn fossil fuels and ignore our charge toward human driven climate change but while our behaviour never seems to improve, something else does! For the last few decades we have been pumping chlorofluorocarbons into the atmosphere causing a hole in the ozone layer to form. Thanks largely to worldwide regulation changes and a reduction in the use of these chemicals, the hole it seems is finally starting to get smaller.