The concept of “day” is so obvious to us, people, that we often get surprised when we realize that the length of the day on other planets can be quite different than here on Earth. Perhaps even more shocking thing is, that so far we did’t know how long is a day on Saturn. Thanks to data collected from the Cassini mission, we have an answer to this long-standing mystery. Saturn spins around its axis for 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds. The findings are published in the Astrophysical Journal. Planetary scientists often use magnetic fields to determine the...
British and American scientists have proved that billions of years ago the Earth resembled the modern Titan, a satellite of Saturn with an atmosphere and vast seas, high mountains, rivers, dunes, mists. Everything is like Earth’s, but with one difference: the temperature of Saturn’s largest satellite is minus 180 degrees, and rivers and oceans contain hydrocarbons. The results of their research were published in the new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to scientists, 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth’s atmosphere, like Titan’s, contained huge amounts of methane – a gas produced by microorganisms, the...
Recently processed data from NASA’s Galileo orbiter have allowed spectacular video sequences to be produced from the flyby over Jupiter’s Moon Europa. Europa is the sixth natural satellite of Jupiter in increasing order of distance and the smallest of the four Galilean satellites. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo and named after Europa, the mother of King Minos of Crete and lover of Zeus. Slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, Europa is composed mainly of silicates and has an icy crust. It has a core that’s most likely made out of iron and nickel. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed of oxygen,...
Uranus – the giant gas world, located 2.8 million kilometers from the Sun – is quite stormy. The NASA Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of these storms, floating in the green-blue atmosphere of the Planet. Literally, the entire North Pole is occupied by hurricane! “Scientists believe this new feature of Uranus is the result of its unique rotation,” NASA writes. Unlike all other planets in the Solar System, Uranus is tipped on its side. This means that the Sun has been shining the North Pole constantly during the local long summer. And this in turn leads to widespread atmospheric...
Our home galaxy is not the thin, clean spiral we had envisioned. Researchers created the first 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy and figured out what makes it warped and twisted. So, we now know that the Milky Way isn’t flat. Scientists from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) and Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia have published a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy revealing an unprecedented 3D map of the galaxy we live in. The scientists used the locations of 1339 ‘standard’ stars to map the outline of the Milky Way galaxy called Classical Cepheids....
On Jan. 19, 2019, just 161 days after its launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its first orbit of the Sun, reaching the point in its orbit farthest from our star, called aphelion. The spacecraft has now begun the second of 24 planned orbits, on track for its second perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on April 4, 2019. Parker Solar Probe entered full operational status (known as Phase E) on Jan. 1, with all systems online and operating as designed. The spacecraft has been delivering data from its instruments to...
The process responsible for the formation of the Earth does not imply the existence of key ingredients for life. New research, however, shows how our planet probably has acquired them. Scientists are saying a Mars-sized planet has hit the Earth about 4.4 billion years ago. On the one hand, it served as a “donor” to the important ingredients for life, as its core was rich in sulfur. On the other – it has led to the formation of the Moon, our natural companion. Experiments prove that much of the nitrogen and carbon of the Earth is the result of this...
A meteorite hit the moon during Monday’s total lunar eclipse The impact happened at 4:41:38 am GMT exactly, or 11:41:38 pm ET 21 January, 2019 The confirmation of the impact came this morning from the Moon Impacts Detection and Analysis System (MIDAS), a project developed by the University of Huelva and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia. MIDAS uses three observatories to capture transient events happening on the surface of the Moon. Monitoring these impacts is very important. By learning about what is hitting the lunar surface we can better understand the space environment around the Earth-Moon system. Plus it...
Jupiter is not only the biggest planet in the Solar System. A new study of astronomers from Laurence Livermore’s Californian Laboratory, and the University of Munster in Germany, defines Jupiter as the oldest planet in the solar system, Space.com reports. The new analysis of the Planet calculates that the core of Jupiter was 20 times larger than the Earth only 1 million years after the formation of the Sun. This is a fairly short time because young stars usually throw a lot of energy in their first years, which is enough to blow dust and gas to prevent the formation...
