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11 June 2010
Astronomers Zoom in on Solar Systems in the Making
For the first time, astronomers have observed in unprecedented detail the processes giving rise to stars and planets in nascent solar systems. Using both Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii outfitted with a specifically engineered instrument named ASTRA (ASTrometric and phase-Referenced Astronomy), Joshua Eisner from the University of Arizona and his colleagues were [...]
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24 May 2010
Wild and Crazy Multi-Planetary System Surprises Astronomers
Astronomers are finding that not only are there a wide range of different extrasolar planets, but there are different types of planetary systems, as well. "We're not in Kansas anymore as far as solar systems go," said Barbara McDonald from the University of Texas' McDonald Observatory, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Miami, [...]
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24 April 2010
Astronomy Without A Telescope – The Nice Way To Build A Solar System
When considering how the solar system formed, there a number of problems with the idea of planets just blobbing together out of a rotating accretion disk. The Nice model (and OK, it’s pronounced ‘niece’ – as in the French city) offers a better solution.(...)Read the rest of Astronomy Without A Telescope – The Nice Way [...]
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15 January 2010
How Water Protected Our Molecules
One would think that crafting a shield out of water wouldn't do much good (not in medieval combat re-enactments, anyways). But that's precisely what the molecules in the early Solar System – some of the same ones that you are made out of today, perhaps – may have done. In their case, protection from broadswords [...]
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13 January 2010
Mysterious Alien Dust Hints at Violent Planet Formation
An artist's rendition of colliding planets, the most likely explanation for the warm dust observed around HD 131488. Image credit: Lynette Cook for Gemini Observatory/AURA Five-hundred light years away, worlds are colliding, and they're made of nothing we've ever seen. Last week at the 215th American Astronomical Society meeting, UCLA astronomers announced that they had found warm [...]
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23 November 2009
Hot Jupiters Bully Super Earths
Bullies are everywhere and the universe is no exception. In our own solar system, Jupiter's mass is second only to that of the Sun. Its gravitational effects tug around a set of asteroids known as the Trojans and may prevent the asteroid belt from becoming anything more substantial. Fortunately, our humble planet gets along with [...]
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23 September 2009
Spitzer Watches Planet-Forming Disk Change Quickly
Something strange is going on around a young star called LRLL 31. Astronomers have witnessed a swirling disk of gas and dust which is changing rather quickly; sometimes weekly. This is likely a planet forming disk, however, planets take millions of years to form, so it's rare to see anything change on time [...]
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10 August 2009
Planet Precursors May be Sized Like Trucks, Not Towns
A typical model has planets forming from collisions of material swirling around stars. But new laboratory experiments indicate the colliding bodies may be much smaller than most people have thought. (...)Read the rest of Planet Precursors May be Sized Like Trucks, Not Towns (170 words) © anne for Universe Today, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: [...]
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16 June 2009
History of Iron Yields New Insight Into Earth’s Deepest Reaches
Earth may have given up its innermost secrets to a pair of California geochemists, who have used extensive computer simulations to piece together the earliest history of our planet’s core. This schematic of Earth’s crust and mantle shows the results of their study, which found extreme pressures would have concentrated iron’s heavier isotopes near the bottom [...]
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10 June 2009
Planet-Forming Disk Discovered Orbiting Binary System
Science fiction is lousy with examples of planets that orbit a system of two suns. Tatooine, in the Star Wars saga, is endowed with a pair of suns to light up the sky, as is the planet Magrathea in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It would indeed be quite a spectacle to wake up [...]
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10 November 2008
Plutoid Eris is Changing… But We Don't Know Why
Eris, the largest dwarf planet beyond Neptune, is currently at its furthest point in its orbit from the Sun (an aphelion of nearly 100 AU). At this distance Eris doesn't receive very much sunlight and any heating of the Plutoid will be at a minimum. However, two recent observations of Eris have shown a rapid [...]
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18 August 2008
Ten Mysteries of the Solar System
We've all wondered at some point or another what mysteries our Solar System holds. After all, the eight planets (plus Pluto and all those other dwarf planets) orbit within a very small volume of the heliosphere (the volume of space dominated by the influence of the Sun), what's going on in the rest of the [...]
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09 July 2008
Sun-like Stars May Have Low Probability of Forming Planets
This protoplanetary disk in the Orion Nebula has a mass more than one hundredth that of the sun, the minimum needed to form a Jupiter-sized planet. Image credit: Bally et al 2000/Hubble Space Telescope & Eisner et al 2008/CARMA, SMA) The Orion Nebula shines brilliantly, as it is packed with over 1,000 young stars [...]
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06 June 2008
Planetary Potential from Protoplanetary Disks
How planets form is one of the major questions in astronomy. Only recently have we been able to study the disks of dust and gas surrounding other stars in an effort to understand the process of how planets coalesce and form from these "protoplanetary" materials. But this is a difficult task at best, [...]
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02 April 2008
Venus' Variable Evolution
For every backyard astronomer, we know 4.5 billion years ago, both Venus and Earth were formed with nearly the same radius, mass, density and chemical composition. Venus is like Earth's evil twin, but why is the climate on both worlds so widely varied? Scientists analysing the data from the orbiting European Venus Express [...]
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