This past week, NASA’s Curiosity rover spent quite a bit of its time happily playing in the sand – on Mars. In December 2016, Curiosity reached a new frontier on Mars – the Bagnold Dunes. The dunes are located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, a mountain at the center of the Gale Crater,…
Tag: planets
Scientists discover huge new rocky planet dubbed “Godzilla of Earths”
Scientists have discovered a new planet that weighs 17 times as much as Earth. Dubbed the “Godzilla of Earths” (officially known by its more boring name – Kepler-10c), the planet is a new type of huge and rocky alien world that is about 560 light-years from Earth. Scientists have always thought that a planet the…
Saturn – the greatest planet (except for Uranus which is easier to work into jokes)
Like Jupiter, Saturn is a large, gaseous planet composed mostly of the gases hydrogen and helium. Saturn has a magnetic field 1,000 times stronger than Earth’s but not as strong as Jupiter’s. Due to its gaseous nature, Saturn’s density is so low that it could float in an ocean of water. It probably has a…
Scientists discover planet 13 times larger than Jupiter – may be bridge between planet and star
Kappa Andromedae b (or ‘Kappa And b,’ for short) is 170 light-years away and orbits its sun, which is a mere 30 million years old (compared to Earth’s 5 billion year old sun), about 1.8 times farther than Neptune’s orbit. It glows red due to radiation from the heat that’s left over from its formation.…
The impossible: first ever quadruple planetary star system discovered – by amateur astronomers
Two volunteer amateur astronomers have confirmed the existence of a Neptune-like planet that has four suns, making it the first quadruple planetary star system ever discovered and a real-life version of Tatooine from “Star Wars”. The planet is a gas giant located 5,000 light years from Earth and orbits one pair of the stars which…
Scientists discover new planet orbiting our nearest neighboring star – Alpha Centauri B
Astronomers have discovered a new planet, about the size of Earth, orbiting Alpha Centauri B, a nearby sun-like star roughly 4 light years away. The new planet orbits its parent star about 10 times closer than Mercury so temperatures might be more than 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit. Still, scientists are hopeful that more planets will be…