A cloud of dust traces the innermost planet’s orbital path. By all accounts, it shouldn’t be there.
orbits & rotations
Posted inNews
“Hot Jupiter” Is in a Possible Death Spiral
Kepler’s first exoplanet is migrating toward its star, an evolved subgiant that is much bigger than first thought.
Posted inNews
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Success
The mission, focused on the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system, proved that an asteroid’s orbit can be altered by kinetic impactor technology.
Posted inNews
Earth’s Orbit Is About to Get More Crowded
The military is launching a fleet of small, interconnected satellites to collect data, track missiles, and aim weapons.
Posted inNews
Long-Gone Moon Could Explain Birth of Saturn’s Rings
Named Chrysalis, the moon could have disintegrated during a close encounter with the gas giant roughly 100 million years ago.
Posted inNews
Massive Stars May Commit Grand Theft Planet
New simulations show that planets around young, massive stars may have been captured or stolen rather than homegrown.
Posted inFeatures
Shake, Rattle, and Probe
Helioseismology allows scientists to study the interior of the Sun, solve some basic physics mysteries, and forecast space weather.
Posted inNews
Precession Helped Drive Glacial Cycles in the Pleistocene
By studying bits of rock scooped up by ancient glaciers, researchers have pinned down that recent glacial variability was driven, in part, by changes in the direction of Earth’s axis of rotation.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Dynamics of Ocean Worlds Likely Controlled by Their Rotation
New simulations suggest that subsurface oceans on icy moons with small natural Rossby numbers may be dominated by rotational effects.