Purple and Brown Colored Planet
Courtesy: Pixabay
White Space Ship and Brown Planet
Courtesy: SpaceX
James Webb Telescope's stunning image of Jupiter !
NASA scientists have also released new shots of the solar system's biggest planet, describing the results as "quite incredible".
The James Webb Telescope took the photos back in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow Earth, stands out brightly alongside countless smaller storms.
One wide-field picture is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a glittering background of galaxies.
"We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all quite incredible," said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the observations.
"We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest," she added in a statement.
The infrared images were artificially coloured in blue, white, green, yellow, and orange, according to the US-French research team, to make the features stand out.
AP/NASA
The chaotic early phase of the solar system!
Before the Earth and other planets formed, the young sun was still surrounded by cosmic gas and dust. Over the millennia, rock fragments of various sizes formed from the dust. Many of these became building blocks for the later planets. Others did not become part of a planet and still orbit the sun today, for example as asteroids in the asteroid belt.
Researchers from ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, in collaboration with an international team, analysed iron samples from the cores of such asteroids that landed on Earth as meteorites. In doing so, they unravelled part of their early history during the time when planets formed. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Image: Tobias Stierli, flaeck / PlanetS
“Out of this World” by Cosmos Astro Art
This artist's conception illustrates a Jupiter-like planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The planets of the solar system
@ Ika Abuladze
"Another Cloudy Day on Jupiter" by Sergio Díaz Ruiz
Astronomy Photographer of the Year
“Perseverance” by Damian Peach,
Astronomy Photographer of the Year
Planet 9!
A new study's "treasure map" suggests that a planet several times more massive than Earth could be hiding in our solar system, camouflaged by the bright strip of stars that make up the Milky Way.
The unseen planet is predicted to exist based on its apparent gravitational influence on a group of small objects with odd, clustered orbits. But so far, searches for it have come up empty, and critics contend that the hints of its presence are just ghosts in the data.
Now, a new analysis predicts that if it’s out there, that skulking planet could be closer, brighter, and easier to spot than previously estimated.
Instead of orbiting our home star once every 18,500 years, astronomers calculate that it loops around the sun in about 7,400 years. That tighter orbit brings it much closer to the sun than previously expected, which means that Planet Nine may appear brighter to Earth-based telescopes.
CALTECH/R. HURT (IPAC)
An artist's representation of Planet Nine, looking back towards the Sun
CALTECH/R. HURT (IPAC)
Lucien Rudaux (1874-1947), “Untitled,’ (Mars as seen from moon Deimos)
Artist and astronomer Lucien Rudaux’s passionate love affair with the galaxy began when he was a child in Normandy and never waned.
He built his first telescope when he was only 10 years old, then joined the Société Astronomique de France when he was 18.
He set up his own observatory in his parents’ garden in Donville-les-Bains not long after, photographing the Moon and planets and creating an atlas of the Milky Way.
A 65-km-wide crater on Mars is named for him.
An artist's impression of the GJ887 planetary system.
Credit: Mark Garlick
Ceres !
With a diameter of 940 km, Ceres is both the largest of the asteroids and the only dwarf planet inside Neptune's orbit. It is the 25th-largest body in the Solar System within the orbit of Neptune