Astronomical objects

The rock was cradled inside one of Perseverance’s six wheels. Image: NASAMars is a lonely place, and it just got a little lonelier for one rover. NASA’s Perseverance has parted ways with a lumpy stone that has been its companion for more than a year.What Is Planet Nine and Why Can’t We Find It?Last spring, a photo of one of Perseverance’s wheels revealed a small rock along for the ride. A recently captured image, however, shows a lonely aluminum wheel without the stowaway that had been stuck there all these months. The…

Imagine uprooting your entire life for a—well, not a dream job, but a decent enough job doing corporate graphic design... on Mars. Then suddenly you’re let go, and you’re stuck on a strange planet surrounded by even stranger people. That’s the premise for HBO Max’s adult animated series Fired on Mars, which has just revealed its first trailer.Fired on Mars | Official Trailer | MaxHere’s the official description: “Jeff Cooper (Luke Wilson) has it all: a fulfilling career as the graphic designer for space start-up Mars.ly,…

A NASA probe sent to observe Jupiter’s swarm of asteroids recently caught the first glimpse of its rocky targets, capturing deep-space images of four of the mysterious Trojans. What Is Planet Nine and Why Can’t We Find It?The Lucy spacecraft used its highest resolution imager, L’LORRI (Lucy LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager), to photograph four Trojan asteroids during a two-day period from March 25 to 27, NASA announced on Thursday. The first asteroids to be seen by Lucy are: Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus. Those…

The Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of Uranus, with a twist: Here, the seventh planet from the Sun is encircled by prominent concentric rings.What Is Planet Nine and Why Can’t We Find It?Uranus has 13 dusty rings, 11 of which are visible in the Webb image. The rings are split into two sets (an inner and outer system), which are named for a range of Greek letters and numbers. The ring system is also visible, albeit more faintly, in Hubble shots of Uranus taken in November 2014 and November 2022.Each planet…

With all the fanfare around the Webb Space Telescope, it’s easy to forget about the tireless work of Hubble, its predecessor. The 30-year-old orbiting observatory has taken new images of Jupiter and Uranus that reveal recent changes in the atmospheres of the two worlds.Jupiter and Uranus are the fifth and seventh planets from the Sun, respectively. The milky-orange gas giant Jupiter is the largest planet; 11 Earths could fit across its equator, while Uranus—a dusty blue—is just about four times wider than Earth.In these…

Scientists have spotted a relict glacier on Mars, near the equator—far from the parts of the planet where water ice is known to exist today. While this leftover glacial structure may not contain any water now, the fact that it exists where it does suggests that water ice had a more expansive footprint in the Red Planet more recently than previously believed. Alongstanding quandary about the Red Planet is when (and where) the planet’s water disappeared. Its surface is marked by evidence that water used to flow in rivers…

The transit of Venus (right) across the sun’s face in 2012, as seen in false color by the SDO satellite.Photo: SDO/NASA (Getty Images)It’s been 30 years since a NASA spacecraft went to Venus, a yellowish planet 67 million miles from the Sun and 141 million miles from us. Venus is often thought of as a sibling planet to Earth, both being rocky worlds close enough to the Sun to bask in its heat. And yet, at some point in their histories, the two worlds diverged in an extreme way.In 2021, NASA and the European Space Agency…

The comet NEOWISE seen over Nevada in 2020.Image: Ethan Miller (Getty Images)An incoming comet recently spotted by telescopes in China and South Africa could be as bright as a planet in the night sky next year, according to astronomers who studied the object.The comet—an accumulation of rock, dust, and ice—is called C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). It was discovered by astronomers at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China in Januaryand subsequently by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on February…

Uranus as seen by Voyager 2 in 1986.Image: NASA/JPL-CaltechWith its strange rings and tilt, surprising seasonal variations, and 27 moons, Uranus is the solar system’s weirdo planet. The enigmatic ice giant has a lot to teach us, which is why astronomers are clamoring for a mission to explore the planet up close.The first dedicated mission to Uranus is long overdue, argues Kathleen Mandt, a planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in a Science Perspectives essay published today. Indeed, it’s been…

On December 12, from 156 miles above the surface of Mars, the HiRise camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted a peculiar sight: the face of a bear, peering up from the crust of the Red Planet.Okay, it’s just a natural rock formation, but it bears a strong resemblance to an ursine face. A circular fracture outline’s the head, while two small twin craters are theeyes.According to a University of Arizona release, the bear’s snout and maw are composed of a V-shaped collapse structure, and the outline of its face…