Tag: Solar System

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is solving long-standing mysteries about the sun. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

NeRD

On Nov. 6, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe passed within 234 miles (376 kilometers) of Venus’ surface. The purpose of this close flyby was to accomplish a gravity-assist maneuver, in which the probe would steal some of Venus‘ momentum to change the spacecraft’s orbit and bring itself even closer to the sun. The Parker Solar Probe had already made several close passes of the sun, but the recent flyby was its closest, coming within about 3.8 million miles (6 million km) of the solar surface. That’s less than nine times the…

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Venus’ ‘missing’ giant impact craters may be hiding in plain sight

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Impact features on Venus may have been staring us in the face all along That’s the message from a team of planetary scientists, who have explained Venus‘ apparent dearth of large craters by discovering that impacts could have produced the mysterious “tesserae” formations on the Venusian surface. Tesserae are large — sometimes continent-size — expanses of terrain that have been deformed and covered with wrinkle ridges, which make the landforms look like sheets of corrugated iron. They are formed by lava welling up to the surface, where it cools and…

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Sun erupts with powerful X2.3 solar flare, triggers radio blackouts (video)

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The sun erupted with an X2.3-class solar flare this morning, triggering radio blackouts  The X-class solar flare was released from a sunspot region AR 3883 at 8:40 a.m. ET (1340 UTC) on Wednesday morning (Nov. 6). Sunspots are darker, cooler locations on the sun that measure the size of planets and denote where the sun’s strong magnetic field roils up to its surface. It was the sunspot region’s strongest flare yet. According to Spaceweather.com, the wait is on for scientists to receive data from the coronagraph on the joint NASA/European Space…

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Small moon of Uranus may have once had a subsurface liquid water ocean

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Over the last few decades, planetary scientists have been steadily adding to the list of moons in our solar system that may harbor interior oceans either currently or at some point in their past. For the most part, these moons (such as Europa or Enceladus) have been gravitationally bound to the gas giants Jupiter or Saturn.  Recently, though, planetary scientists have been turning their attention further afield, towards the ice giant Uranus, the coldest planet in the solar system. And now, new research based on images taken by the Voyager…

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New study of Apollo 16 moon samples reveals hidden lunar history

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Scientists continue to piece together the moon’s complex history using lunar samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions over half a century ago.  A fresh analysis of lunar dust collected by Apollo 16 astronauts in 1972 offers a clearer picture of the effects of asteroid strikes on the moon, allowing scientists to reconstruct billions of years of lunar history. The findings could also help upcoming crewed missions pinpoint precious natural resources for establishing moon bases, scientists say. After landing in the heavily-cratered Descartes region in the lunar highlands, astronauts John Young,…

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Before and after satellite images show lakes appearing across Sahara after deluge of rain soaks desert

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Lakes have appeared in the Sahara after a cyclone brought a deluge of rain to northern Africa that drenched swathes of the largest hot desert on Earth, satellite images show. An extratropical cyclone hit parts of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya on Sept. 7 and 8, dropping around 8 inches (20 centimeters) on the affected areas — equivalent to an entire year’s worth of rainfall in just a few days, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory. The deluge and runoff filled multiple ephemeral lakes in the Sahara, including the Sebkha el…

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See Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS eject a tail of gas and dust as it flies past the sun (photos)

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A dazzling comet left behind a dramatic dust tail as it swept around the sun, new photos reveal. C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was visible to the naked eye earlier in October as the comet, which is sort of an icy space snowball, flew past the sun and Earth. Fresh telescope footage from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory reveals that the comet’s dust tail was visible near the sun “for several days”, long after the little world left the neighborhood, lab officials stated. Related: See the ‘comet of the century’ light up…

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Watch sun erupt in 1st images from NOAA’s groundbreaking new satellite (photos)

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The first images from a new space-based telescope launched into Earth’s orbit to monitor the sun captured a striking solar storm outburst.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shared the first images taken by its Compact Coronagraph (CCOR-1), the world’s first operational space-based coronagraph. CCOR-1 is mounted on NOAA’s newest geostationary satellite, GOES-19, which launched into orbit above Earth on June 25.  CCOR-1 began its mission to observe the sun’s corona — the faint outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — on Sept. 19. The powerful solar telescope uses…

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Headless ‘Halloween comet’ could already be doomed

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The latest update concerning “the other comet” of October 2024 — Comet C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) — is that it continues on target to completely disintegrate before it sweeps around the sun early next Monday.  Back on Oct. 10, Space.com published an article indicating that this comet — which belongs to the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets — was in the process of disintegration and would likely not develop into an eye-catching object like its early October predecessor, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.  However, an online story published this past Monday evening (Oct. 21)…

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Most of Earth’s meteorites may have come from the same 3 spots

NeRD

Earth is constantly getting pummeled by meteorites. We are unaware of most of them, as they burn up in our atmosphere before they hit the ground. Every now and again, though, something larger gets drawn into Earth’s gravitational field —  and when this happens, it usually spells bad news for any life living on our planet’s surface.  Scientists know that the vast majority of meteorites that come crashing down to Earth originate from the solar system‘s main asteroid belt: a region between Mars and Jupiter where irregularly shaped rocks left…

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