On July 4, the veil over Jupiter's mysteries will be ripped away with the arrival of NASA's Juno mission, and Jonathan Lunine will be there to watch it happen.
The media often imply that the goal of the hunt for extrasolar planets is to find a rocky planet about the size of Earth orbiting a star like the sun at a distance that would allow liquid water to persist on its surface. ...
So far, NASA's Kepler has led to the discovery of 2 325 exoplanets. But clearly not all of them are habitable. To help detect suitable candidates, identify the range of atmospheric conditions on planets with water and shed ...
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio observatory in Chile have made the first high-resolution image of the belt of comets (a region analogous to the Kuiper belt in our own Solar ...
The four planets of the Kepler-223 star system seem to have little in common with the planets of Earth's own solar system. And yet a new study shows that the Kepler-223 system is trapped in an orbital configuration that Jupiter, ...
Is there life beyond our solar system? If there is, our best bet for finding it may lie in three nearby, Earth-like exoplanets.
Saturn's beautiful rings form a striking feature, cutting across this image of two of the planet's most intriguing moons.
(Â鶹ÒùÔº)—A team of Japanese astronomers has recently discovered water ice at the surface of a distant star's disk. Using the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) installed on the Gemini South Telescope in Chile, ...
In the last two decades, humanity has discovered thousands of extrasolar planetary systems. Recent studies of star- and planet-formation have shown that chemistry plays a pivotal role in both shaping these systems and delivering ...
(Â鶹ÒùÔº)—L1551 IRS 5 is a young binary star, only about half a million years old. Due to its proximity (about 450 light years away) and its high activity, the system has been intriguing astronomers for many years. Malcolm ...
