solar system

05CeresCeres is the smallest dwarf planet with an equatorial diameter of about 599 miles (about 964 kilometers). Ceres is about 1/13 the width of Earth. The closest dwarf planet to the Sun, Ceres orbits the Sun from an average distance…

The Martian surface is heavily crateredStocktrek Images, Inc. / Alamy When a single small meteorite struck Mars a few million years ago, it didn’t just create one crater. It ultimately created billions of them. The…

ON THE morning of 24 September 2023, Dante Lauretta woke up early, his pulse racing. For 20 years, he had been working on a NASA space mission that aimed to scoop up a sample of an asteroid and return it to Earth.…

The planets Uranus (left) and Neptune (right) have a few additional moonsNASA, ESA, Mark Showalter (SETI Institute), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Andrew I. Hsu, Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley) Astronomers have spotted new…

The surface of Jupiter’s moon Callisto is scarred with impact craters, and its atmosphere holds carbon dioxide gasNASA/JPL/DLR Astronomers have spotted gaseous carbon dioxide across the atmosphere of Jupiter’s…

One of the main arguments for studying other planets is for what they can tell us about Earth. Did…

A sample from the asteroid Bennu, brought back by the OSIRIS-REx mission, feature hints that it was once part of a planetesimal with conditions favourable for life to emerge

Comet Arrokoth is a small Kuiper Belt object made of of two parts with pancake-like shapesNASA Spinning clouds of pebbles may lead to the formation of oddly flattened objects in the solar system, including comets and…

The original Voyager 2 photo of Neptune (left) and the reprocessed image from the new study (right)Patrick Irwin Neptune’s true colour is a pale greenish-blue similar to that of Uranus, contrary to popular images…

The original Voyager 2 photo of Neptune (left) and the reprocessed image from the new study (right)Patrick Irwin Neptune’s true colour is a pale greenish-blue similar to that of Uranus, contrary to popular images…

This image of Io was captured by the Juno spacecraftNASA/SwRI/MSSS We have just had our closest look at Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io for decades, thanks to NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which passed the moon on 30 December.…

MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY IT ALL seemed so simple when we knew the date of Earth’s demise. In 5 billion years from now, so the story went, the solar system will have dramatically transformed. Instead of…

Uranus’s moon MirandaNASA/JPL/USGS The moons of Uranus may have short-lived atmospheres every time the seasons change. The seasons there are so intense that these tenuous atmospheres, called exospheres, could exist…

When the sun was young, it may have stolen a planet from another nearby star - meaning an exoplanet could be waiting on the outer edges of the solar system for us to discover

Could Earth end up in the Oort cloud?Shutterstock / Dotted Yeti If a passing star came near the solar system, Earth would probably be fine – but there is a small chance our entire world could get thrown to the outer…

Let’s be honest: the asteroid belt is a bit of a mess. It is full of big rocks hurtling around at high speeds, occasionally getting tossed towards assorted planets, and generally causing a ruckus. On this episode of…

The sun isn’t quite as big as we thought, so may release solar flares differently to how we expectNASA Our sun is fractionally smaller than it seems, which could change our understanding of its internal structure and…

A photo of Pluto taken by NASA’s New Horizons missionNASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute A supervolcano on Pluto as large as the one in Yellowstone National Park,…

Illustration of the OSIRIS-REx sample return capsule passing through Earth’s atmosphereNASA Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab Bits of the asteroid Bennu are coming back to Earth. NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft took…

Artist’s impression of Europa (foreground) with Jupiter to the right and the moon Io in the distance.NASA/JPL-Caltech The ocean inside Jupiter’s moon Europa may be carbonated – not in the sense that it’s fizzy, but…

An artist’s illustration of MakemakeNASA, ESA, and A. Parker Icy rocks in the outer solar system might have unexpected subsurface oceans. Eris and Makemake are both dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt – the ring of…

Observations of comets orbiting the star Beta Pictoris have revealed their range of sizes, which suggest that they probably form via…

A unique lumpy landscape on Pluto was probably built up via ice seeping up from its surprisingly warm interior that has created…