It hasn’t been found yet – let me make that clear. But with evidence that it should exist, astronomers are looking more closely at the proposed planet nine and how it might have formed, and how it could have ended up in such a distant orbit. When you start to think about how a planet ten times the mass of Earth could have ended up more than ten times as far from the Sun as Neptune, a few scenarios pop into mind: It was formed in the inner solar system, where interactions with gas giants or another star pulled it out It formed...
What is the difference between a comet and an asteroid? The typical response is that an asteroid is rocky and a comet is icy/gassy. Further than this, asteroids typically orbit closer to the Sun than Neptune, and comets orbit beyond this loose dividing line. But as with everything in nature, there are often exceptions to the rule. C/2014 S3 PANSTAARS is classified as a weakly active comet, originating in the Oort cloud with an orbital period of 860 years. As it approached the Sun, astronomers noticed that it was lacking the characteristic comet tail, resulting from the blast of solar radiation upon approach to the...
Jupiter has aurora. It’s not surprising since it has a very powerful magnetic field. It’s only natural that the two largest structures in the solar system, the Sun’s solar wind influence (called the heliosphere) and Jupiter’s magnetosphere, should be constantly battling. But don’t expect to see Jupiter’s aurora through a backyard telescope. The result of this battle is far more energetic, producing an aurora invisible to the human eye, one made of X-rays. The Sun constantly blasts charged particles off into space in all directions, assaulting the planets, moons, and other solar system bodies. It is this blast of solar wind that gives...
Gas giants, like Jupiter, Saturn, or some of the largest exoplanets, are mostly made of Hydrogen gas. The simplest and most abundant element in the universe, Hydrogen easily reacts to form compounds, especially at higher temperatures, making it hard to contain and work with. It’s essential to understand how it behaves across a range of temperatures and pressures so that we can understand the interiors of stars and planets. But there may also be applications closer to home, like the white whale of materials science, a room temperature superconductor. A team of researchers from Osaka University and Tokyo Institute of...
If you wanted to look at weather and climate patterns on the Earth, you would put a satellite in orbit and watch the planet for a long time, looking for changes in the cloud layers and measuring wind speeds, etc. It isn’t a stretch to think that we could do the same for another planet, especially since most of the planets in the solar system have atmospheres. Jupiter, being the largest and heaviest planet, also has immense wind speeds and beautiful vortex features, some of which are larger than the Earth. But in order to understand these features, we have...
It’s difficult to determine the history of the Solar System. The planets have been in their current orbits for Billions of years, and any signs of prior activity or configuration has to come from leftover geologies of smaller, rocky worlds. It makes it especially difficult when the Billions of interloper asteroids and comets throughout history have to be accounted for, adding to the already complex task. But if there is one thing humanity has going for us it’s the ability to theorize, model, simulate, and test scenarios here on Earth. We can try new ideas and see if they match...
Move over Saturn, J1407b has rings that are far more spectacular than anyone would have imagined. This distant ‘planet’ (It may not actually be a planet) orbits an orange star 117 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, and has a ring system consisting of 30 separate rings, each of which could be tens of Millions of Kilometres wide. In Spring of 2007, while monitoring the light from the star, astronomers noticed that the star was being eclipsed multiple times to varying degrees. This led the team, consisting of astronomers from Leiden Observatory and the University of Rochester, to conclude that...
Since Voyager 1 and 2 passed by Saturn in 1980 and 1981 respectively, scientists have wanted more information about the many amazing icy moons that orbit the gas giant. The follow up mission to Saturn, Cassini, has been in orbit around the planet for over a decade, and has since mapped the icy moons in their entirety. Take a look at some of the Voyager images and how they compare to the new colour maps from Cassini. I should note that the colours in the Cassini images are beyond human vision, extending into infrared and ultraviolet to add some further...
The seventh planet from the Sun is a boring one. The best photos we have of Uranus were obtained in January 1986 during the passing of Voyager 2, and they revealed a cold, pale-green, ball of Methane four times the diameter of Earth with very little visible activity. Since then, we’ve learned a lot about Uranus, and it’s far more interesting than we thought. It has rings, a magnetosphere, and numerous moons. It has a 98 degree axial tilt, meaning that the poles of the planet cycle through 42 years of sunlight and 42 years of darkness during it’s 84...
