Aside from delivering a trove of valuable information about Jupiter and its nearby environment, the Juno probe has also sent back a number of spectacular photos
NASA cancels maneuver to get Juno closer to Jupiter due to faulty fuel valves — but that’s not bad news
Named after a capricious goddess, Juno lives up to her name.
NASA’s mission to search for life on Europa takes shape
If we want to look for extraterrestrial life, Europa might be one of the best guesses in the solar system.
Jupiter’s cloud bands extend for hundreds of kilometers into the atmosphere
Scientists peeled Jupiter and make striking findings.
Juno captures the closest-ever pictures of Jupiter we’ve seen — and its hair-raising voice
We’ve never seen anything like this before.
NASA’s Juno shuttle gets up close and personal with Jupiter
NASA’s Juno shuttle will get closer to Jupiter than any other man-made structure.
Jupiter’s Red Patch Heats up the Entire Planet
We finally know what caused the huge, Earth-sized red spot on Jupiter.
Io’s atmosphere collapses every time there’s an eclipse
Reason number #1304 not to colonize Io.
Too big to orbit: Jupiter is so massive it doesn’t actually orbit the Sun
They actually take one another for a spin.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is heating its upper atmosphere
The swirling gases could shed light on the atmosphere of other planets within and outside of our solar system.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft sends back first color image of Jupiter from orbit
The image captures the gas giant and its surroundings in amazing detail.
Welcome to Jupiter! Juno spacecraft successfully enters orbit
Shouts of joy filled the air as Juno’s success became evident and the shuttle enrolled on the gas giant’s orbit.
Jupiter’s moon Europa could have Earth-like oceans
If I asked you to guess where we have the best chances of finding life outside of Earth, you’d be hard pressed to think about Europa. But Jupiter’s frozen moon is beginning to look more and more attractive, and may even harbor an Earth-like ocean. We’ve written extensively before about the life harboring possibilities of Jupiter’s moon, Europa. Beneath the
One of Saturn’s ring has played tricks on astronomers for years
One of Saturn’s ring, which is very opaque and bright seems to have played an optical illusions all along. It is in fact much lighter than previously though — as little as a seventh of the mass it appears to have.
Babylonians used advanced geometry 1,400 years before Oxford
A German astrophysicist decoded ancient Babylonian tablets stuffed with computations. His analysis reveals that these were used by the ancient scholars to predict where and when Jupiter would show up in the night’s sky based on abstract computations so advanced they’re indispensable to modern science. It’s thought analytical geometry was invented at Oxford in the 14th century, but it seems the Babylonians had it covered more than 1,400 years earlier.
NASA’s solar-powered Juno shuttle breaks record distance at 793 million km from the Sun
Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program that wants to get up-close and personal with several planets in our solar system. The shuttle itself is going towards Jupiter to study its gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how the planet formed, including whether it has a rocky core, the amount of water present within
Jupiter may have ousted a fifth gas giant out of the solar system 4 billion year ago
Our solar system likely had a fifth gas giant in its initial configuration, but the planet was ejected by Jupiter a new study suggests.
Ocean of Magma Could Explain Io’s Strange Volcanoes
An ocean of magma could explain why Jupiter’s moon Io has volcanoes in the “wrong place”. This would also mean that Io has an ocean of liquid water beneath its surface and might be potentially habitable.
Biggest Planets Started out as Tiny Pebbles
Gas giants like Saturn or Jupiter may have formed not from a planetary core, but rather from tiny pebbles that stuck together. This theory would solve one of the biggest problems about our understanding of planetary formation: the timeline. The previous model was called core accretion: you have a planetary core of rock and ice that starts to attract and keep
Astronomers find huge lava lake on Jupiter’s moon Io
Scientists analyzing data from the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory in Arizona spotted a huge lava lake on Io, one of Jupiter’s largest moons. We’ve known for a while that Io is quite an amazing (and hellish) place; it’s the most geologically active place in the solar system, with extreme geologic activity occurring as a result of tidal friction. As both Jupiter and the
