Uranus: The Ice Giant with Extreme Seasons, Dark Rings & Mysterious Climate
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and is classified as a gaseous, cyan-colored ice giant. Most of the planet is composed of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, commonly referred to in astronomy as “ice” or…
Saturn: The Ringed Gas Giant and Second Largest Planet in the Solar System
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth. Although it has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, it is over 95 times…
Mars: Facts About the Red Planet, Its Moons, Surface, and NASA Missions
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is often called the “Red Planet” due to its reddish appearance, which is caused by iron oxide (rust) on its surface. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war. According to Roman mythology, some…
The Moon: Earth’s Only Natural Satellite
The Moon, also known as Luna, is Earth’s only natural satellite. One widely accepted theory suggests that the Moon formed billions of years ago when a Mars-sized celestial body named Theia collided with the early Earth. The debris from this massive…
The Blue Jewel of the Solar System
Earth is the only known planet in our solar system that supports life. It is often called the “Blue Planet” because about 71% of its surface is covered with water, mostly in the form of oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. This abundance of water…
Venus: The Bright Beauty with a Fiery Heart
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth’s “twin sister” because of their similar size and composition. The planet was named after the Roman goddess of beauty. Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, mainly…
The Basics of Mercury: Our Solar System’s Speedy Planet
Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system. It is the first planet from the sun but still Venus is the hottest planet of our solar system. Mercury is named after the roman god of speed because it revolves to fast that it’s one year lasts 88 Earth…
June 23, 2015: 60,000 orbits for Mars Odyssey
NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft completed its 60,000th orbit of the Red Planet on June 23, 2015. When Odyssey launched in April 2001 with a goal of better understanding Mars’ environment, the Red Planet was generally thought to be dry, barren world; the…
June 28, 2011: Kerberos is discovered
On June 28, 2011, Pluto’s moon Kerberos was discovered by a team using the Hubble Space Telescope, led by senior research scientist Mark Showalter. While the primary goal of the observing program was to identify both potential targets and potential…
How a signal from a 60-year-old satellite baffled astronomers for over a year
Around midday on June 13 last year, my colleagues and I were scanning the skies when we thought we had discovered a strange and exciting new object in space. Using a huge radio telescope, we spotted a blindingly fast flash of radio waves that appeared to…