Articles

Franck Marchis

One year ago, Franck Marchis wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here's an update.

Jason Davis

The spacecraft is expected to discover 50 new Earth-sized planets and as many as 500 planets smaller than twice the size of Earth.

Casey Dreier

The James Webb Space Telescope will miss its target launch date and cost more money than expected, NASA announced.

James Davenport

On December 10, Kepler—NASA’s prized exoplanet discovery telescope—will finally turn back and take a picture of the Earth.

Peter Rosén

Peter Rosén shares an amazing animation of Jupiter made from more than 1,000 images taken by 91 amateurs from around the world.

Jake Rosenthal

Jake Rosenthal takes us on a tour of the history of discovery of our place in the cosmos.

Ruth McAvinia

ESA has committed to continuing its ExoMars programme and participation with the International Space Station, but cut funding for its Asteroid Impact Mission.

Anatoly Zak

After many years of development, a cutting-edge Russian-German space observatory with little-known contribution from the US is finally approaching the launch pad...or so its scientists say.

Erika Nesvold

At this year’s Division for Planetary Sciences/European Planetary Science Congress meeting, the Exoplanet Dynamics session was packed full of talks on tightly-packed multi-planet systems and their instabilities.

Emily Lakdawalla

The third-largest object known beyond Neptune, 2007 OR10, has a moon. The discovery was reported in a poster by Gábor Marton, Csaba Kiss, and Thomas Mueller at the joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (DPS/EPSC) on Monday.

Darin Ragozzine

Pluto’s small moons have unusual rotation rates and states. Now we know a moon of another dwarf planet does as well. Is there a connection?

Emily Lakdawalla

The astronomy world is abuzz today because of ESA's announcement of the first release of data from the Gaia mission. Gaia is a five-year mission that will eventually measure the positions and motions of billions of stars; this first data release includes positions for 1.1 billion of them, and proper motions for 2 million.

Jason Rhodes

NASA’s next big “flagship” astronomy mission, following the ambitious James Webb Space Telescope due to be launched in 2018, is currently known as the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST)—but it's had a slew of different names.

Judy Schmidt

Processing Hubble data presents a host of challenges, and the first of these has nothing to do with processing at all.

Judy Schmidt

Amateur image processor Judy Schmidt explains the process of creating gorgeous views of the cosmos from infrared data from the WISE telescope.

Alex Parker

The solar system beyond Neptune is full of worlds hosting moons. Now we know that the dwarf planet Makemake has one of its very own.

Jason Rhodes

Cosmologist Jason Rhodes details the path he took to play a leading role in a European mission designed to learn about dark energy.

Leigh Fletcher

A summary of Jupiter's changing face as seen from Earth during its 2014/2015 apparition.

Emily Lakdawalla

What is the solar system moon with the densest atmosphere? Most space fans know that the answer is Titan. A few of you might know that Triton's is the next densest. But what's the third? Fourth? Do any other moons even have atmospheres? In fact, they do; and one such atmosphere has just been discovered.

Emily Lakdawalla

A newly published paper confirms a subsurface ocean at Ganymede. An ocean there was already suspected from its magnetic field and predicted by geophysics; new Hubble data confirms it, and even says it is in the same place we thought it was before. Such consistency is rare enough in planetary science to be worth celebration.