gas giants
Beautiful Planetary Rings Are Dead Dwarf Planets! Dead Dwarf Planets!!!
A new study from a team of Japanese researchers shows that the rings of the gas giants might be the…
What Does “Earthlike” Even Mean & Should It Apply To Proxima Centauri b?
With so many exoplanet discoveries around distant (and neighboring) stars, it might be time to assess what terms like "Earth-like"…
Centaurs Keep Their Rings From Greedy Gas Giants
Minor planets like Chariklo are good at keeping their ring systems away from larger planets, and we are beginning to…
Surveying the “Fossils of Planet Formation”: The Lucy Mission
In February of 2014, NASA's Discovery Program put out the call for mission proposals, one or two of which will…
Solar System Guide
The Universe is a very big place, and we occupy a very small corner of it. Known as the Solar…
Which Planets Have Rings?
Planetary rings are an interesting phenomena. The mere mention of these two words tends to conjure up images of Saturn,…
Is Our Solar System Weird?
Is our Solar System normal? Or is it weird? How does the Solar System fit within the strange star systems…
Physicists Reveal the Hidden Interiors of Gas Giants
In astronomy we love focusing on the bigger picture. We’re searching for exoplanets in the vast hope that we may…
Solar Powered Jupiter bound JUNO lands at Kennedy Space Center for blastoff
[/caption] Juno, NASA’s next big mission bound for the outer planets, has arrived at the Kennedy Space Center to kick…
Giant Planets
[/caption] While the inner four planets seem large, they are nothing compared to the four outer planets, which are also…