When NASA first started planning the Kepler mission, no one knew if the universe held any planets outside our solar system. Thousands of exoplanets later, the search enters a new phase as Kepler retires.
Planetary protection protocols try to make sure we don’t seed places like Mars with life from our planet. An astrobiologist argues they’re misguided – especially with human astronauts on the horizon.
The mass of the Earth is big enough that the gravitational force it creates can pull the hard shape of ice, rock and metal into a sphere.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Suomi NPP VIIRS data from Miguel Román, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Imagine the Earth pulling everything it is made up of, all of its mass, towards its centre. This happens evenly all over the Earth, causing it to take on a round shape.
Lasers being shone from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
These lasers help remove the twinkles in the night sky and help astronomers see stars clearer on Earth than ever before.
F. Kamphues/ESO
Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland; Belinda Nicholson, University of Southern Queensland; Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland, and Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland
How exactly do the stars twinkle in the night sky? As it turns out, the answer is full of hot air… and cold air.
Two spacecraft concepts for the Plato mission.
ESA
While we on Earth are familiar with our own star, the Sun, the European Space Agency’s PLATO mission will explore solar systems similar to ours as well as those that are more exotic.
While Mercury is indeed very hot, it is not hot enough to melt.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
What caused the Big Bang is still a mystery. And that’s just one of the many unanswered questions, in spite of everything we do know about the birth of the Universe.
The raw images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot taken this week by the Juno probe.
NASA/SwRI/MSSS
The images are in from the Juno probe’s closest flyby so far of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Citizen scientists are now getting involved in processing those images.
KELT-9B is the hottest known planet.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Researchers recently discovered the hottest planet known. But which one is the coldest? And the biggest?
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.
ESO provides new ways to access the southern sky for Australian astronomy.
ESO/José Francisco Salgado
Plants on other planets are bound to be even weirder than the strangest ones we find on Earth – if they even exist.
Saturn and its rings backlit by the sun, which is blocked by the planet in this view. Encircling the planet and inner rings is the much more extended E-ring.
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
A group of astronomers are trying to reclassify Pluto as full ‘planet’. But there are good reasons to leave our classification system alone, and this doesn’t mean Pluto is any less interesting.
Artist impression of the Trappist-1 System.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/spaceengine.org