Tagged: planets

Pictures from space! Our image of the day

  Feeling blue: The difference between Uranus and Neptune’s colors is hazy Now we might know why Neptune is a deeper blue in the face than Uranus. It comes down to a deep atmospheric layer that is full of haze. Neptune tends to recycle methane...

EarthSky’s August 2021 Guide To Visible Planets

You’ll need binoculars to see the Mercury-Mars conjunction from the Northern Hemisphere. It’ll be better from the Southern Hemisphere. This chart shows the conjunction as seen from Montevideo, Uruguay, on August 19, 2021. Read more. Star chart showing moon moving past Jupiter and Saturn in...

Goldilocks planets ‘with a tilt’ may develop more complex life

Planets which are tilted on their axis, like Earth, are more capable of evolving complex life. This finding will help scientists refine the search for more advanced life on exoplanets. This NASA-funded research is presented at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference. Since the first discovery of...

Kepler telescope glimpses population of free-floating planets

Tantalizing evidence has been uncovered for a mysterious population of “free-floating” planets, planets that may be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star. The results include four new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth, published today in Monthly...

Update On The 7 Earth-Sized Planets Orbiting Nearby TRAPPIST-1

An exciting discovery by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2017 revealed seven Earth-sized planets orbiting the nearby star TRAPPIST-1, less than 40 light-years away. Details about these planets have been hard to come by, but astronomers have wondered, are any like Earth? Are some like...

These 5 Multi-Star Systems Have Habitable Zones

Planets orbiting in their stars’ Goldilocks zones or habitable zones are not too close and not too far from their stars. They’re in a place where water might exist as a liquid on a rocky planet. We tend to think of a planet in the...

How many planets are there?

WHETHER or not you believe in life beyond Earth, there are actually a  minimum of 100 billion planets in our universe, according to a Nasa study. But how many planets make up our solar system? How many planets are there in our solar system? There...