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News tagged with gas giant

NASA's Juno spacecraft refines its path to Jupiter

(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully refined its flight path Wednesday with the mission's first trajectory correction maneuver. The maneuver took place on Feb. 1. It is the first ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Feb 03, 2012 | popularity 3 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception

There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 12, 2012 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (9) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

New class of planetary systems: Astronomers find two new planets orbiting double suns

Using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems -- planets that orbit two stars. This work establishes that such ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 11, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (10) | comments 12 | with audio podcast

Image: Active Galaxy Centaurus A

(PhysOrg.com) -- Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jan 04, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0

The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog, a new online database of habitable worlds

Scientists are now starting to identify potential habitable exoplanets after nearly twenty years of the detection of the first planets around other stars. Over 700 exoplanets have been detected and confirmed ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 05, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 1

Caltech-led team of astronomers finds 18 new planets

Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 02, 2011 | popularity 3.9 / 5 (15) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Mission to mysterious Uranus

Scientists want to send an orbiter and probe to the ice giant planet Uranus, but do the resources exist to support such an ambitious project?

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Oct 12, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 22

Computer simulation shows Solar System once had an extra planet

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study published on arXiv.org shows that, based on computer simulations, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may not have been the only gas giants in our solar system. According to David ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 22, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (20) | comments 13 | with audio podcast report

Rocky planets could have been born as gas giants

When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 16, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (11) | comments 38

Jupiter-bound space probe captures Earth and Moon

(PhysOrg.com) -- On its way to the biggest planet in the solar system -- Jupiter, NASA's Juno spacecraft took time to capture its home planet and its natural satellite -- the moon.

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Aug 31, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (6) | comments 4 | with audio podcast

Alien world is blacker than coal

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 11, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (14) | comments 21 | with audio podcast

Coming to a solar system near you… super-Earth!

It is our general understanding of solar system composition that planets fall into two categories: gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus… and rocky bodies that support some type of atmosphere ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 08, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (16) | comments 15 | with audio podcast

Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft mated to its rocket

NASA's Juno spacecraft completed its last significant terrestrial journey today, July 27, with a 15-mile (25-kilometer) trip from Astrotech Space Operations in Titusville, Fla., to its launch pad at the Cape ...

Space & Earth / Space Exploration

created Jul 28, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

Exoplanet aurora: An out-of-this-world sight

Earth's aurorae, or Northern and Southern Lights, provide a dazzling light show to people living in the polar regions. Shimmering curtains of green and red undulate across the sky like a living thing. New ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jul 21, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (5) | comments 3 | with audio podcast

Twisted tale of our galaxy's ring

(PhysOrg.com) -- New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Jul 20, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (11) | comments 17 | with audio podcast