It’s widely thought that the Earth arose from violent origins: Some 4.5 billion years ago, a maelstrom of gas and dust circled in a massive disc around the sun, gathering in rocky clumps to form asteroids. These asteroids, gaining momentum, whirled around a fledgling solar system, repeatedly smashing into each other to create larger bodies […] … learn more→

Every six seconds, for millions of years, comets have been colliding with one another near a star in the constellation Cetus called 49 CETI, which is visible to the naked eye. Over the past three decades, astronomers have discovered hundreds of dusty disks around stars, but only two — 49 CETI is one — have […] … learn more→

OxSciBlog: What makes Ganymede so interesting? Leigh Fletcher: When people think of moons in our solar system, they often imagine them as being inferior to the main planets, and somehow less interesting. The moons of Jupiter show how wrong that misguided assumption can be – the four largest Jovian moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) […] … learn more→

In the last two decades, the study of extrasolar planets — those that lie outside our own solar system — has become one of the most important fields of astrophysics. Now a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) team that includes Prof. Tsevi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University\’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the […] … learn more→

In 1977, Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president, Elvis died, Virginia park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning a record seventh time and two NASA space probes destined to turn planetary science on its head launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla. The identical spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched in the summer […] … learn more→

Three planets — each orbiting its own giant, dying star — have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, the astronomers observed the planets\’ parent stars — called HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 — tens of light years away from our […] … learn more→

A giant Jupiter-like gas planet has been revealed to be the most light-thirsty object in the known universe — a finding that may help astronomers better understand a mysterious characteristic of similar planets found outside our solar system. Recent analysis on a planet dubbed TrES-2b has found that it probably absorbs 99.9 percent of the […] … learn more→