VOA
Search
Menu
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Science World
Science World

Tag: atmosphere

This artist's concept shows planet KELT-9b orbiting its host star, KELT-9. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Iron and Titanium Found in Atmosphere of Ultra-hot Exoplanet

August 17, 2018

The chemical makeup of Earth’s atmosphere is said to contain about 78% Nitrogen and 21% oxygen, with argon, carbon dioxide, and other gases making up the remaining 1%. But an international team of scientists says they have detected vapors of iron and titanium in the atmosphere of what is considered to be the hottest “ultra-hot” […]

An isolated hill in the Medusae Fossae Formation. The effect of wind erosion on this hill is evident by its streamlined shape. (High Resolution Stereo Camera/European Space Agency)

Volcanic Activity Created Martian Geological Oddity

June 19, 2018

Scientists have long been puzzled by a mysterious formation located near the equator of Mars called Medusae Fossae. A new study from a pair of scientists – Lujendra Ojha and Kevin Lewis – at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore suggests that the large deposit of soft rock was probably formed as a result of violent volcanic eruptions that […]

NASA's Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency's Mars 2020 rover. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA Plans to Fly Helicopter on Mars

May 17, 2018

There are two robotic rovers traversing and exploring the surface of Mars – NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers. These rovers, along with two others (Sojourner & Spirit) from past missions, use(d) specially made wheels to get around the Red Planet. Instead of just wheels NASA now wants to try a different way to travel around Mars. […]

Artist rendering of the exoplanet WASP-107b transiting its highly active K-type main sequence star. (ESA/Hubble, NASA, M. Kornmesser)

First Detection of Helium in an Exoplanet Atmosphere

May 4, 2018

Scientists say for the first several hundred thousand years or so after the Big Bang, there were virtually only two elements in the universe, hydrogen, and helium. A hydrogen atom is made of only one proton and one electron, and a helium atom has two each of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Hydrogen and then helium are […]

A composite image of the planet Venus as seen by the Japanese probe Akatsuki. (Akatsuki Orbiter built by Institute of Space and Astronautical Science/Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

Life May Exist Among the Clouds of Venus

April 3, 2018

The search for extraterrestrial life has included examining the possibilities within and outside of the solar system. It has been thought that Mars and a couple of the moons of Saturn and Jupiter may hold the chance of having ET life. It’s also thought by some that a number of Earthlike extrasolar or exoplanets residing […]

Drawing of the Tiangong-1 (Craigboy/Wikimedia Commons)

Chinese Space Station Expected To Fall to Earth Within Days

March 28, 2018

Aerospace experts say they expect the Chinese space station, Tiangong-1, or “Celestial Palace 1” in English, to drop out of orbit and fall to Earth sometime between March 30th and April 2nd. Considering its orbital path and expected reentry trajectory, the experts say the space station could fall anywhere in the world between nearly 43° north […]

Sitting next to its parent star, this the Saturn-mass exoplanet WASP-39b, about 700 light-years from Earth. (NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI))

Lots of Water Detected in Exoplanet WASP 39b Atmosphere

March 5, 2018

Scientists, who studied a “hot Jupiter-like” exoplanet with NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, were able to detect signs of water in its atmosphere. And, they didn’t just find signs of a little water – but a lot of water, three times the amount of water on our solar system’s largest planet, Jupiter. The exoplanet they […]

This series of Hubble Space Telescope images taken over 2 years tracks the demise of a giant dark vortex on the planet Neptune. (NASA, ESA, and M.H. Wong and A.I. Hsu (UC Berkeley))

Hubble Tracks Mysterious Storms on Neptune

February 16, 2018

When NASA’s Voyager 2 visited Neptune, in 1989, scientists noticed immense dark storms swirling in its atmosphere. Since then only the Hubble Space Telescope has had the ability to spot and track these mysterious storms. Hubble found a pair of these dark storms in the mid-1990s and then noticed they later had disappeared completely. The […]

Cosmic rays interacting with the Earth's atmosphere producing ions that helps turn small aerosols into cloud condensation nuclei -- seeds on which liquid water droplets form to make clouds. (illustration - H. Svensmark/DTU)

Cosmic Rays Found to Impact Cloud Formation

February 13, 2018

A recent study from scientists at the Technical University of Denmark provides new evidence that cosmic rays play a role in cloud formation, thus affecting our climate. Cosmic rays are a form of fast-moving, high-energy radiation that emanates from the sun or from sources light years away from our solar system. According to the study, […]

This artist's concept shows what the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system may look like. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

New Insight Into TRAPPIST 1 Planets

February 7, 2018

Two new, but separate, studies provide fresh insight into planets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. One of the studies, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, suggests the atmospheres of at least three of the seven TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets found so far do not seem to be as hydrogen-rich as our solar system’s gas giant […]

<span class="meta-nav screen-reader-text">Page</span>

1 2 … 5 Older

Top Tags

  • NASA262 Posts
  • astronomers103 Posts
  • ESA87 Posts
  • Mars86 Posts
  • study81 Posts
  • "European Space Agency"80 Posts
  • "solar system"77 Posts
  • spacecraft76 Posts
  • Sun63 Posts
  • JPL62 Posts
VOA
  • Archives
  • Contact
  • Science World