Solar System Archives

January 28, 2021January 28, 2021 by Evan Gough

Exoplanetary System Found With 6 Worlds in Orbital Resonance

This artist’s impression shows the view from the planet in the TOI-178 system found orbiting furthest from the star. New research by Adrien Leleu and his colleagues with several telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, has revealed that the system boasts six exoplanets and that all but the one closest to the star are locked in a rare rhythm as they move in their orbits. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/spaceengine.org

200 light-years away from Earth, there’s a K-type main-sequence star named TOI (TESS Object of Interest) 178. When Adrian Leleu, an astrophysicist at the Center for Space and Habitability of the University of Bern, observed it, it appeared to have two planets orbiting it at roughly the same distance. But that turned out to be incorrect. In fact, six exoplanets orbit the smallish star.

And five of those six are locked into an unexpected orbital configuration.

December 17, 2020December 17, 2020 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Have Found Planet 9… in Another Solar System

This 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System dubbed “Planet Nine.” This is the first time that astronomers have been able to measure the motion of a massive Jupiter-like planet that is orbiting very far away from its host stars and visible debris disc. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser

Even with all we’ve learned about our own Solar System, especially in the last couple of decades, researchers still face many unanswered questions. One of those questions regards the so-called Planet Nine. The Planet Nine hypothesis states that there’s a massive planet in our Solar System orbiting at a great distance from the Sun.

Nobody’s ever observed the hypothesized planet; the evidence for it lies in a cluster of bodies that orbit the Sun 250 times further out than Earth does. These objects are called e-TNOs, for extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects. According to the hypothesis, Planet Nine’s gravity is responsible for the unusual clustered orbits of these e-TNOs.

Now astronomers have found a distant solar system with its own Planet Nine, and that discovery is breathing new life into the hypothesis.

December 1, 2020December 1, 2020 by Evan Gough

In the Far Future, Stellar Flybys Will Completely Dismantle the Solar System

A lovely artistic look at our Solar System that's definitely not to scale. Image Credit: NASA

Consumption and disintegration.

Next time you want to be the life of the party—if you’re hanging out with cool nerds that is—just drop that phrase into the conversation. And when they look at you quizzically, just say that’s the eventual fate of the Solar System.

Then adjust your cravat and take another sip of your absinthe.

November 2, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

How did the Earth get its water? The answer might be found on Mercury

Artist's conception of early planetary formation from gas and dust around a young star. Outbursts from newborn and adolescent stars might drive planetary water beneath the surface of rocky worlds. Credit: NASA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

I don’t know if you’ve noticed by now, but the Earth is a little bit wet. How Earth got all its water is one of the major mysteries in the formation of the solar system, and a team of Japanese researchers have just uncovered a major clue. But not on Earth – the clue is on Mercury.

October 9, 2020October 9, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

The Solar System has a second plane where objects orbit the Sun

Artist's impression of the ecliptic plane (yellow), and the recently-discovered "empty" ecliptic (blue) in our solar system. (Credit: NAOJ)

Almost all the objects orbiting the sun live in a particular plane, called the ecliptic plane. But a recent analysis of long-period comets reveals a second home, a so-called “empty ecliptic”. And it may be populated with comets dragged there by none other than the gravity of the Milky Way galaxy.

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020 by Evan Gough

Check Out How Big the Planets and the Moon Will be in Our Sky Over the Next Two Years

This is a screenshot of a data visualization video. It shows the apparent sizes of Solar System objects from our Earthly vantage point. Image Credit: James O'Donoghue

Everything in space is moving. Galaxies collide and merge, massive clouds of gas migrate, and asteroids, comets, and rogue planets zip around and between it all. And in our own Solar System, the planets follow their ancient orbits.

Now a new data visualization shows us just how much our view from Earth changes in two years, as the orbits of the planets change the distance between us and our neighbours.

September 16, 2020September 16, 2020 by Evan Gough

Uranus’ Moons are Surprisingly Similar to Dwarf Planets in the Kuiper Belt

Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus—and two of its moons—230 years ago. Now a group of astronomers working with data from the telescope that bears his name, the Herschel Space Observatory, have made an unexpected discovery. It looks like Uranus’ moons bear a striking similarity to icy dwarf planets.

The Herschel Space Observatory has been retired since 2013. But all of its data is still of interest to researchers. This discovery was a happy accident, resulting from tests on data from the observatory’s camera detector. Uranus is a very bright infrared energy source, and the team was measuring the influence of very bright infrared objects on the camera.

The images of the moons were discovered by accident.

September 10, 2020September 10, 2020 by Evan Gough

Jupiter Probably Has 600 Small, Irregular Moons

Europa, Callisto, and Io in front of Jupiter in January 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

The better our technologies get, the better we get at finding objects in space. That’s certainly true of Jupiter and its moons. Prior to Galileo, nobody knew the other planets had moons. Then in 1609/10, as he made improvements to his telescope, he aimed it at the gas giant and eventually found four moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Now those four natural satellites also bear his name: the Galilean moons.

Over the centuries since then, and especially in our digital age, astronomical tools and methods kept improving. In particular, wide-field CCD (Charge Coupled Devices) have led to an explosion of astronomical discoveries. In recent years, the confirmed number of Jovian moons has risen to 79. Now, a new study says that there may be 600 small irregular moons orbiting Jupiter.

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Europa’s entire icy shell shifted 70-degrees a few million years ago

Images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft show the intricate detail of Europa's icy surface. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The mysterious world Europa, the ice-covered second moon of Jupiter, sports deep scars that cut across its face. An international team of investigators studied high-resolution maps of that surface to reveal a pattern: something shook Europa sometime within the past few million years, causing the entire shell to shift by 70 degrees.

August 12, 2020August 12, 2020 by Evan Gough

A Huge Ring-Like Structure on Ganymede Might be the Result of an Enormous Impact

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and may have an ocean sandwiched between two layers of ice. But how warm is that ocean? Image Credit: By National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8070396

Ganymede’s surface is a bit of a puzzle for planetary scientists. About two-thirds of its surface is covered in lighter terrain, while the remainder is darker. Both types of terrain are ancient, with the lighter portion being slightly younger. The two types of terrain are spread around the moon, and the darker terrain contains concurrent furrows.

For the most part, scientists think that the furrows were caused by tectonic activity, possibly related to tidal heating as the moon went through unstable orbital resonances in the past.

But a new study says that a massive impact might be responsible for all those furrows.