All the buildings and the cars and the restaurants, and the phones and even everything that’s inside of you… it all started with an exploding star, billions of years ago.
Pluto in enhanced color, to illustrate differences in the composition and texture of its surface.
NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute
Now’s a great time to see Jupiter as it’s about to be the closest to Earth for some time. Time too to catch up with the latest on the Juno mission, exploring the largest planet in our Solar System.
This enhanced-color image of Jupiter’s south pole and its swirling atmosphere was created by citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko using data from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Roman Tkachenko
We may need to re-think our models of Jupiter’s formation thanks to the first results from Juno probe orbiting the planet, and new observations from Earth.
Satellite image of California’s San Andreas fault, where two continental plates come together.
NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
Fifty years on from a groundbreaking paper, geophysicists have progressed from believing continents never moved to thinking that every movement may leave a lasting memory on our planet.
Some of the Earth’s fault lines between tectonic plates in the East Asia region.
Shutterstock /Mopic
Jupiter had a big influence on how our solar system’s planets formed. New research – led by a high school student – tried to nail down how rare Jupiter analogs really are in other planetary systems.
New Horizons’ look at Pluto’s Charon-facing hemisphere reveals intriguing geologic details that are of keen interest to mission scientists. This image was taken on July 11, 2015, when the spacecraft was 4 million km from Pluto.
NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI
The New Horizons spacecraft is only hours away from its closest approach to Pluto. It’s hoped the brief encounter will help answer many questions about the oddball member of our solar system.