Solar System on EARTH Magazine

Some of Earth's water originated in the solar system's birth

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 15:52:20 -0500

Some of Earth's water may have originated as hydrogen in the solar nebula — the gas and dust left over after the sun's formation. Credit: NASA.

When Earth first formed, the oceans of water we know today were nowhere in sight. The long-standing consensus about where our planet’s water came from posits that it was not present during Earth’s formation and that it was later brought by chondritic materials like meteorites, asteroids and comets. But new research suggests some also came from the solar nebula — the gas and dust left over from the formation of the sun that created the planets.

The only Earth: Exploring the link between plate tectonics and life on the blue planet

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 11:31:36 -0400

Credit: NASA.

Earth is the only planet known to have active plate tectonics, and also the only place that hosts life. Could that be a coincidence? It’s possible, but most geoscientists don’t think so. In many ways, it seems plate tectonics was fundamental in setting the stage for biological evolution and for maintaining and sustaining life on Earth.

Ceres' homemade organic materials

Wed, 17 May 2017 12:22:13 -0400

Researchers analyzing data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have found signs of organic compounds that arose on the surface of Ceres, a dwarf planet one-fourth the diameter of our moon in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The compounds’ origins may provide clues about how life on Earth got started.

Down to Earth With: Planetary geologist James W. Head III

Wed, 15 Mar 2017 14:30:57 -0400

James W. Head III, shown here in Antarctica, is the Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of Geological Sciences at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Credit: Dave Marchant.

In the late 1960s, as James W. Head III was finishing his graduate degree in geology at Brown University in Providence, R.I., he decided one day to take a look at a college placement annual, a phone book-like publication that listed prospective employers according to the types of jobs they had available. When Head looked up geology in the index, he saw several consecutive pages of related listings, as well as one separate page number. Curious about the outlier, Head flipped to it — and never looked back. Covering that entire page was a photo of the moon, a D.C.-area phone number, and a single line of text: “Our job is to think our way to the moon and back.”

Pluto may still have liquid ocean

Wed, 19 Oct 2016 16:29:01 -0400

Deep fractures revealing tectonic activity suggests that Pluto may have a liquid ocean. Credit: Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

Last year, images from NASA’s New Horizons flyby of Pluto revealed geologic activity that suggested a liquid ocean may have once lurked beneath the dwarf planet’s icy crust. But whether it still exists in that state, or had frozen, remained a question. According to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, it may still be partially liquid.

Dust orbiting Jupiter is going the wrong way

Tue, 18 Oct 2016 13:34:51 -0400

The JUICE spacecraft, scheduled to launch for Jupiter in 2022, will study dust emitted from moons orbiting the gas giant. Credit: ESA/AOES.

Periodically, micrometeoroids strike one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter — Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — sending dust into space, some of which enters into orbit around the gas giant. Recently, researchers charting the dusts’ orbits spotted some peculiar patterns, including some particles orbiting Jupiter in a retrograde fashion, by circling, when viewed from above, clockwise rather than counterclockwise.

Benchmarks: April 9, 1895: James Edward Keeler confirms Saturn's rings not solid

Tue, 21 Jun 2016 15:57:56 -0400

James Edward Keeler designed a spectroscope for the Lick Observatory's 36-inch (91-centimeter) refracting telescope. Credit: ©Naotake Murayama, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

On April 9 and 10, 1895, astronomer James Edward Keeler snapped the most important photographs of his life. With a 13-inch (33-centimeter) refracting telescope, Keeler captured proof that Saturn’s rings were not solid disks, but instead a collection of particles revolving around the planet. The discovery put to rest a question that astronomers had been pondering for more than two centuries.

Jupiter's shrinking Great Red Spot

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 10:10:58 -0500

New images of Jupiter show some key changes in the gas giant's atmosphere and storm systems. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M. Wong (UC Berkeley), and G. Orton (JPL-Caltech).

Like a kid sitting for her annual school portrait, Jupiter lines up with the Hubble Space Telescope for a series of photographs once a year. The images capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric patterns, and are used to create yearly maps of the gas giant to study how it changes over time.

Conjunction injunction: Recent and future planetary alignments

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:53:03 -0400

Distant Space. Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Mike Grindley.

February 1962: The five planets visible to the naked eye, as well as the sun and moon, all appeared within 17 degrees of each other in the sky. A concurrent solar eclipse and new moon made it possible to view the planets.

Benchmarks: February 4, 1962: Five planets align - but no end of the world

Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:36:32 -0400

Highly-detailed 3D rendering of our earth (north america) with very active and big sun in background. The 3D rendering using an Earth map from NASA (Visible Earth). Credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Christian Miller.

In the movie “2012,” released in theaters last November, an alignment of five planets in our solar system — supposedly foretold by the Mayans thousands of years ago — causes horrors that span nearly every earth science disaster movie cliché: solar flares, neutrinos, earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, poles shifting, oceans washing over the tallest mountains in the world, cities falling into the sea, mass hysteria and, basically, total destruction of life as we know it.

A pair of moons with underground oceans

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 13:34:09 -0400

Interactions between deep ocean water and hot rock on Saturn's moon Enceladus are thought to result in hydrothermal plumes that erupt through the moon's icy crust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Jupiter and Saturn are both gas giants boasting multiple moons. Now, two separate studies have identified another similarity: Each appears to have a moon with hidden underground oceans.

Two new looks at Titan's dunes

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 10:54:25 -0400

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is covered with extensive fields of sand dunes around its equator. From a distance, the wind-swept landscape looks similar to those seen on Earth, Mars and Venus, but new research suggests that dune formation on Titan may require different conditions than previously thought.

A journey to Pluto and beyond with New Horizons

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 15:49:18 -0500

New Horizons was launched aboard an Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Jan. 19, 2006. Credit: NASA.

Last year was an exciting one for space exploration. On Oct. 19, spacecraft at Mars got a close-up of Comet Siding Spring as it passed within about 132,000 kilometers of the red planet (less than half the distance between Earth and the moon). And on Nov. 12, the European Space Agency’s historic Rosetta mission set the Philae lander down on Comet 67P. This year promises yet another historic mission as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft visits the outer solar system, conducting the first flybys of Pluto and the even-more-distant Kuiper Belt.

Down to Earth With: The Geographers of the Solar System

Tue, 13 Jan 2015 10:58:13 -0500

Certain government officials have super cool titles: for example, Planetary Protection Officer (NASA’s Catharine Conley) and Oceanographer of the Navy (David Titley). I think Geographer of the Solar System would be right up there. Alas, no one actually has that title, but in a little-known office of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) nestled in the hills above Flagstaff, Ariz., I met a dozen or so people who could reasonably qualify for it.

Red Planet Roundup: January 2015

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:15:08 -0500

Within days of arriving at Mars, MAVEN mapped carbon, oxygen and hydrogen in the planet's upper atmosphere with the help of its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument. Credit: University of Colorado/NASA.

As two rovers patrol the surface of Mars, five spacecraft orbit above and scientists back here on Earth study the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced almost weekly. Here are a few of the latest updates.

Nanoflares power the sun's superheated corona

Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:36:13 -0500

An active region on the sun, as seen in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft. Credit: NASA/SDO.

The sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, reaches temperatures of more than 1 million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than its visible surface. The reason for this has puzzled scientists, who so far have only been able to theorize explanations.

Red Planet Roundup: November 2014

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:54:18 -0400

As Curiosity and Opportunity rove around Mars, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Mars Express and Mars Odyssey orbit above, and scientists on Earth study the Red Planet from afar, new findings are announced almost weekly. Here are a few of the latest updates.

New lunar research answers old questions, poses others

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 21:12:09 -0400

This optical micrograph shows pyroclastic glass beads in a lunar rock sample brought back during the Apollo missions. Scientists detected lunar water in glass beads similar to these in 2008. Credit: G.J. Taylor, HIGP.

From its close perch in the sky, the moon has long mystified artists, lovers and scientists. Now a quartet of recent papers — all of which touch on the moon’s violent birth and turbulent infancy — may help scientists put two long-standing lunar mysteries to rest, while deepening a third enigma and suggesting a speculative solution to a fourth.

Mercury formed by hit and run?

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 20:10:27 -0400

Mercury is iron rich and lacks a mantle, unlike its silicate-rich neighbors Venus and Earth. Credit: NASA.

The solar system was once as busy as a store parking lot on Black Friday. Collisions were common in the early days, and new evidence of a hit-and-run scenario may explain some of Mercury’s peculiarities.

Cassini spots new moon in Saturn's rings

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 08:52:13 -0400

Saturn's rings and moons are made up primarily of ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic.

Saturn is famous for its rings, but the sixth planet from the sun also has dozens of moons — 62 at last count, 53 of which have names — and now, according to new observations, it may have a 63rd. In April of last year, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spotted a newly formed object at the edge of Saturn’s outermost A ring.

Saturn's polar hexagon stable over time

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 08:44:35 -0400

This false-color, multi-wavelength image looking down on Saturn's north pole, assembled from Cassini spacecraft data, shows the planet's peculiar but highly stable atmospheric hexagon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University.

Saturn’s peculiar polar “hexagon” has proven perplexing for scientists studying the atmospheric phenomenon since Voyager 1 and 2 first observed it in the early 1980s. Now, an international team has completed the most thorough study of the six-sided jet stream yet, using images and data collected between 2008 and 2014 by the Cassini spacecraft.

Rings not just for planets anymore

Mon, 21 Jul 2014 15:23:55 -0400

An artist's drawing of Chariklo, the first nonplanetary object in the solar system found to host rings. Credit: Lucie Macquet.

Reporting their findings in Nature, an international team of more than 60 astronomers recently announced the detection of two rings — an inner 7-kilometer-wide-ring and an outer ring just 3 kilometers wide — circling Chariklo, which orbits the sun on a path between Saturn and Uranus. It is the largest of a group of solar system bodies called Centaurs, which are actually considered minor planets and sometimes share characteristics of both asteroids and comets.

Super-Earths: Mirrors of our world?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:41:58 -0500

An artist's conception of the hot Jupiter HD 189733 b, which orbits too close to its star to be habitable. The planet's atmosphere may contain water vapor and methane. NASA

The Gliese 581 system. Only Gliese 581 d, about eight times the mass of Earth, is firmly in the habitable zone (blue), where liquid water oceans might exist. ESO

Fifty light-years from Earth, in the constellation Pegasus, burns a yellow star not unlike our sun. The star, called 51 Pegasi, was one of 142 stars under the watchful gaze of Swiss astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz of the University of Geneva in 1994. From the La Silla Observatory at the southern end of Chile’s vast Atacama Desert, Mayor and Queloz were tracking how these stars move in the sky, hoping to determine whether the stars were alone — or whether any of them might be accompanied by a planet or two.