Space Station Threshold

Everyone loves twinkling stars and moonlit nights—EXCEPT astronomers. But astronomers are crafty people, so they've come up with ways to mitigate the distortion that Earth's thick atmosphere causes for ground based telescopes (from which stars appear to twinkle). And now, a new image-correction technique has delivered the sharpest ...

As far as storms go, nothing will rival Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS). But of interest is a smaller and newer storm called Oval BA, a giant anticyclone on Jupiter also known as Red Spot Junior. 'Smaller' is a relative term, as although Oval BA is about half the size of GRS, it [...]

The interiors of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, are pretty extreme places. With atmospheric pressures of around 70 million Earth atmospheres, the phases of material become a bit difficult to understand. Usually when we think of a liquid metal, we have thoughts about liquid mercury at room temperature (or the reassembling liquid metal [...]

Greetings, Fellow Stratos Dwellers! Have you had more than your fair share of clouds lately and are hankering for a few photons? Skies haven't been spectacular in this part of the world either and when it is clear, the heat is sure making it difficult to get a nice steady view. But, it's [...]

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter has been observed for over 150 years, and it doesn't appear this anti-cyclonic storm is showing any signs of letting up. How does it maintain its power? Well, like a planetary Pac-Man, it "eats up" other storms, zapping them of their power. The sequence of images [...]

Jupiter appears to be breaking out with spots, as a third red storm has joined the Great Red Spot and Red Spot Jr. (or Oval BA) in the planet's turbulent atmosphere. This third spot used to be a white storm, and its change to a red color might mean storm is so becoming more [...]

When it comes to the mighty Jupiter - and seeing Jupiter's moons through a small telescope or binoculars - timing is everything. Jupiter's satellites are constantly on the move, and almost any time you observe you'll see at least one. The four largest of Jupiter's moons are known as the Galileans, and go [...]

Scientists have expressed their concern that the Solar System may not be as stable as it seems. Happily orbiting the Sun, the eight planets (plus Pluto and other minor planets) appear to have a high degree of long-term gravitational stability. But Jupiter has a huge gravitational influence over its siblings, especially the smaller planets. It ...

Robotic spacecraft can gather a lot of data, and sometimes it takes years to sort through all the information acquired. Case in point: The Galileo spacecraft orbited Jupiter from 1995-2003. One discovery made by this mission was an anomaly in Jupiter’s rings. For the most part, the rings fall into the [...]

Jupiter is a spotty place. There's the aptly-named Great Red Spot – a large, long-lasting storm – that we all know and love, and new storms crop up every so often to create interesting features for astronomers both professional and amateur to study. The most recent discovery of new spots can only be seen in [...]