In an unofficial sense, I’d like to call today (April 10) ‘View a Planet Day’. In the early morning hours two planets will appear very close together and later that same day in the early evening sky we will have the chance to see Jupiter hovering close to a slender waxing crescent moon, making for … Read more
Astronomers have discovered that a distant, scorching-hot planet twice the size of Jupiter is in a death spiral that will send it spiraling toward its parent star. Cosmically, a crash is expected to occur relatively soon. Researchers have been predicting for some time that this planet, called WASP-12b, will eventually plunge into its star located … Read more
This illustration of Europa shows how its icy surface can shine even on the night side, as Jupiter continually bombards it with radiation.NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA’s Juno mission discovered that Jupiter’s icy moon Europa produces 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours. It’s enough to keep a million people breathing for a day, but it’s much less … Read more
NASA’s Juno mission will come closer to Jupiter’s moon Io on Saturday (December 30) than any spacecraft has in about 20 years. The flyby will take Juno to about 1,500 kilometers from Io, the most volcanic body in the solar system. This allows the spacecraft to view Io in detail while collecting a wealth of … Read more