Sun – Page 2 – Science World

After launching the Iridium-2 mission on June 25, 2017, the first stage of the SpaceX Falcon 9 is seen here returning and coming in for a landing on the “Just Read the Instructions” droneship that was positioned in the Pacific Ocean. (SpaceX, Flickr/Creative Commons)

Science Images – June, 2017

June 30, 2017

This animation shows the progression of NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) investigation for the mission's first three years following its restart in December 2013. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/PSI)

Einstein Proven Correct; Gravitational Waves Detected; Super Hot Planet

June 8, 2017

Einstein Theory Confirmed Again In his 1915 Theory of General Relativity, physicist Albert Einstein proposed that mass can bend space time. And he predicted that when a distant star’s light passed by a large object en route to the observer, the object’s gravity can bend and brighten the starlight like a magnifying lens. This effect, called […]

NASA plans to send a spacecraft to within 6.5 million kilometers of the sun's surface next summer. Here’s an artistic rendering of the Parker Solar Probe heading toward the Sun. On May 31, the spacecraft was named to honor astrophysics Eugene Parker who discovered the solar wind in 1958. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory).

May 2017 – Science Images

June 1, 2017

An artist's illustration of the epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b, right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system's Kuiper Belt. (NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook)

Solar System Mimics Ours; The Big Empty; Closest Human Relative?

May 3, 2017

Nearby Planetary System Mimics our Solar System A group of scientists using NASA’s airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy or SOFIA recently completed a study that confirmed their previous findings of a young and nearby planetary system. The researchers found that the system surrounding the star Epsilon Eridani, which is about 10.5 light years away […]

This artist's concept illustrates a supermassive black hole with X-ray emission emanating from its inner region (pink) and ultrafast winds (light purple lines) streaming from the surrounding disk. (ESA)

NASA Prevents Space Wreck; Black Hole Winds; Oldest Fossils Found

March 3, 2017

NASA Prevents a Wreck at Mars The folks at NASA’s MAVEN program recently had to give their spacecraft a small unscheduled course correction so that it wouldn’t smash into Mars’s moon Phobos. The spacecraft that’s been circling the Red Planet for a little over two years conducted a motor burn that give it a slight […]

This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. (Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC))

Is Planet 9 Causing Our Solar System to Wobble?

October 20, 2016

A new study from researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that Planet 9, the huge and so far unseen planet said to be lurking in the far reaches of the solar system, might be causing our group of planets to wobble a little and giving an impression that the sun is slightly tilted. […]

Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission were surprised to find that Ceres has no clear signs of truly giant impact basins. This image shows both visible (left) and topographic (right) mapping data from Dawn. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI)

Where are Ceres Large Craters?

July 27, 2016

After NASA’s Dawn spacecraft had passed by the asteroid Vesta, on its way to rendezvous with Ceres, mission scientists noticed that its surface was banged up with a lot of very large craters. Its biggest impact crater is Rheasilvia, which measures 505 km in diameter. They expected that Ceres would also be seriously pitted with giant impact basins too. […]

June 2016 Science Images

June 29, 2016

Did our Sun Snatch Planet 9 from Another Solar System?

June 3, 2016

Is it possible that the new-found theoretical Planet 9 is actually an exoplanet, a planet from another solar system? According to astronomers at Sweden’s Lund University, it’s “highly likely” that Planet 9 was actually “snatched” from another solar system by our young sun some 4.5 billion years ago, or within 100 million years after its formation. […]

This image, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows Mars, as it was observed On 5/12/16, before opposition in 2016 (NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute)

Mars Makes Closest Approach to Earth in More Than a Decade

May 23, 2016

Do you want to get a good look at Mars? Well now is the time to catch the Red Planet as it makes its closest approach to Earth in the past eleven years. Every 26 months in an event called an opposition by astronomers – Mars and the Sun happen to be on opposite sides […]

Tag: Sun