Category: Solar System

Note: A post from my work blog – original here. There’s something strange going on with the planets on the outer edge of the Solar System…. For centuries, astronomers have been using slight oddities in the motion of  known planets to uncover other planets. Probably the most famous of these was the discovery of the…

New research has been published on the organic analysis of the Winchcombe meteorite which crashed landed onto a driveway in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, England in 2021. The research, led by Dr. Queenie Chan, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, found organic compounds from space which holds the secrets to the…

A new ring system in the Solar System? Plus it’s beyond the Roche Limit – which will mean a re-think of our understanding of orbital bodies. ESA’s Cheops finds an unexpected ring around dwarf planet Quaoar During a break from looking at planets around other stars, the European Space Agency’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed…

Is this isn’t a worry, I don’t know what is! Astronomers have discovered a giant asteroid hiding in the glare of the sun that might one day cross paths with Earth The 0.9-mile-wide (1.5 kilometers) asteroid is the largest potentially hazardous asteroid spotted in the past eight years and astronomers have dubbed it a “planet killer” because…

Read more here Neptune

An international team of astronomers have used ground-based telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), to track Neptune’s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period. They found a surprising drop in Neptune’s global temperatures followed by a dramatic warming at its south pole. – More here –

  SwRI instruments aboard Rosetta help detect unexpected ultraviolet aurora at a comet   Data from Southwest Research Institute-led instruments aboard ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft have helped reveal auroral emissions in the far ultraviolet around a comet for the first time. Source: www.swri.org/press-release/rosetta-ultraviolet-aurora-comet-67p-churyumov-gerasimenko

Lucy: The First Mission to the Trojan Asteroids Time capsules from the birth of our Solar System more than 4 billion years ago, the swarms of Trojan asteroids associated with Jupiter are thought to be remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets. The Trojans orbit the Sun in two loose groups, with…