New images from the Hubble Space Telescope have captured a rare occurrence as three of the Jupiter’s largest moons – Europa, Callisto and Io – parade across the giant gas planet’s banded face. There are four Galilean satellites – Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto; named after the 17th century scientist Galileo Galilei who discovered them. […]
After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world’s most advanced instrument for directly imaging planets around other stars is pointing skyward and producing its first images of planets outside our solar system. (The image at right shows the planet Beta Pictoris b, orbiting the star Beta Pictoris. The star is hidden behind […]
New research suggests that the size of an asteroid belt – and its proximity to a giant Jupiter-like planet – needs to be just right for life to evolve in a planetary system. The new theory, developed by NASA’s Rebecca Martin and Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute, indicates that solar systems with […]
Something slammed into Jupiter over the weekend, creating a massive bruise that was picked up by amateur Australian astronomer Anthony Wesley. Now, University of California astronomer Paul Kalas has used the Keck II telescope in Hawaii to better capture an image of the moon-sized blemish. The near infrared image shows a bright spot in Jupiter’s […]
A two-hour exposure of Jupiter using a prototype Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics (MCAO) instrument mounted on the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has produced the sharpest whole-planet picture ever taken from an Earth-based telescope. Taken by astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the series of 265 snapshots reveal changes […]
Astronomers from the University of California, Berkeley, say that the increased turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging, prompting a theory that Jupiter is in the throes of a major climate change. Examining the new images from the Hubble Space Telescope (the first since Jupiter emerged from […]
For the first time, astronomers have been able to detect and monitor the reflected visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Employing techniques similar to how sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, a team of scientists led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Astronomy were able […]
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has successfully completed a fly-by of Jupiter, using the massive planet’s gravity to pick up speed on its 3 billion mile voyage to Pluto and the unexplored Kuiper Belt region beyond. The craft came within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter yesterday, successfully threading an “aim point” just 500 miles across. The […]
The Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a detailed view of the birth of a second red spot on Jupiter. This is the first time that astronomers have witnessed the birth of a new red spot – really a massive atmospheric storm – on the giant planet, which is located half a billion miles away. […]
