Topic: Jupiter

NASA reports Project 1640 explores the Atmosphere of Planets far away

May 12, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets — planets that orbit stars beyond our sun — and more than 2,700 other candidates.

What are these exotic planets made of? Unfortunately, you cannot stack them in a jar like marbles and take a closer look. Instead, researchers are coming up with advanced techniques for probing the planets’ makeup.

This image shows the HR 8799 planets with starlight optically suppressed and data processing conducted to remove residual starlight. The star is at the center of the blackened circle in the image. The four spots indicated with the letters b through e are the planets. This is a composite image using 30 wavelengths of light and was obtained over a period of 1.25 hours on June 14th and 15th, 2012. (Image courtesy of Project 1640)

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NASA says Venus, Jupiter, Mercury to Align in Triple Conjunction in the Sunset Sky May 25th

May 11, 2013 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Sunset is a special time of day.  Low-hanging clouds glow vivid red and orange as the background sky turns cobalt blue. The first stars pop out in the heavenly dome overhead, eliciting wishes from backyard sky watchers.

The sunset of May 26th will be extra special. On that date, Venus, Jupiter and Mercury will gather in the fading twilight to form a bright triangle only three degrees wide.

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NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft discovers Plasma changes at Saturn

May 3, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Researchers working with data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have discovered one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn — known as the magnetosphere — changes with the planet’s seasons.

The finding provides an important clue for solving a riddle about the planet’s naturally occurring radio signal. The results might also help scientists better understand variations in Earth’s magnetosphere and Van Allen radiation belts, which affect a variety of activities at Earth, ranging from space flight safety to satellite and cell phone communications.

This is an artist’s concept of the Saturnian plasma sheet based on data from Cassini magnetospheric imaging instrument. It shows Saturn’s embedded “ring current,” an invisible ring of energetic ions trapped in the planet’s magnetic field. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/JHUAPL)

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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees Meteors crash into Saturn’s Rings

April 27, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui C. Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings.

These observations make Saturn’s rings the only location besides Earth, the moon and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of meteoroids from outside the Saturnian system helps scientists understand how different planet systems in our solar system formed.

Five images of Saturn’s rings, taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft between 2009 and 2012, show clouds of material ejected from impacts of small objects into the rings. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Cornell)

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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observes Comet ISON approach

April 25, 2013 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Later this year, Comet ISON is expected to become a naked-eye object when it skims through the atmosphere of the sun. The Hubble Space Telescope has just obtained a sneak preview.

Hubble photographed ISON on April 10th.  At the time, the comet was 386 million miles from the sun (394 million miles from Earth), just inside the orbit of Jupiter.

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NASA’s Herschel Space Telescope links Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9′s Impact to water around Jupiter

April 24, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have finally found direct proof that almost all water present in Jupiter’s stratosphere, an intermediate atmospheric layer, was delivered by comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which famously struck the planet in 1994.

The findings, based on new data from the Herschel space observatory, reveal more water in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, where the impacts occurred, than in the north. Herschel is a European Space Agency mission with important NASA participation.

This map shows the distribution of water in the stratosphere of Jupiter as measured with the Herschel space observatory. White and cyan indicate highest concentration of water, and blue indicates lesser amounts. The map has been superimposed over an image of Jupiter taken at visible wavelengths with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: Water map: ESA/Herschel/T. Cavalié et al.; Jupiter image: NASA/ESA/Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University))

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NASA reports Comet ISON dust trail to bring unusual meteor shower to Earth

April 20, 2013 |

Written by Dr. Tony Phillips
Science at NASA

Washington, D.C. – Anticipation is building as Comet ISON plunges into the inner solar system for a close encounter with the sun in November 2013. Blasted at point-blank range by solar radiation, the sungrazer will likely become one of the finest comets in many years.

When NASA’s Swift spacecraft observed the comet in January 2013, it was still near the orbit of Jupiter, but already very active. More than 112,000 pounds of dust were spewing from the comet’s nucleus every minute.

It turns out, some of that dust might end up on Earth.

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NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope finds Planet near the size of Earth orbiting in the Habitable Zone of another Star

April 19, 2013 |

Written by Whitney Clavin
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.

The Kepler-62 system has five planets: 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets: 69b and 69c. Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c are the super-Earth-sized planets.

The artist’s concept depicts Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star smaller and cooler than the sun, located about 1,200 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. (Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA funded study shows rain from Saturn’s Rings falls across the Planet

April 14, 2013 |

Written by Jia-Rui Cook
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – A new study tracks the “rain” of charged water particles into the atmosphere of Saturn and finds there is more of it and it falls across larger areas of the planet than previously thought.

The study, whose observations were funded by NASA and whose analysis was led by the University of Leicester, England, reveals that the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn’s upper atmosphere. The paper appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

This artist’s concept illustrates how charged water particles flow into the Saturnian atmosphere from the planet’s rings, causing a reduction in atmospheric brightness. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/University of Leicester)

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NASA’s Galileo mission observations of Saturn’s moon Europa gives target areas for future study

April 13, 2013 |

Written by Guy Webster
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa exposes material churned up from inside the moon and also material resulting from matter and energy coming from above.

If you want to learn about the deep saltwater ocean beneath this unusual world’s icy shell — as many people do who are interested in possible extraterrestrial life — you might target your investigation of the surface somewhere that has more of the up-from-below stuff and less of the down-from-above stuff.

This graphic of Jupiter’s moon Europa maps a relationship between the amount of energy deposited onto the moon from charged-particle bombardment and the chemical contents of ice deposits on the surface in five areas of the moon (labeled A through E). (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Ariz./JHUAPL/Univ. of Colo.)

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