Mercury does not possess any natural satellites – none, nada, zip and zilch! Reason being, Mercury lies so close to the Sun that its gravity could disrupt any potential moon’s orbit and pull it directly into Mercury or even into its atmosphere. Mercury formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago from swirling gas and dust that…
Pluto and its moons hold many secrets that New Horizons discovered through Alice – its sensitive ultraviolet imaging spectrometer. Instruments have detected an atmospheric haze which could contain methane. Pluto Underground team has created a unique spacecraft designed to investigate this mystery. The Mission As New Horizons will pass Pluto this Wednesday, astronomers will finally…
Mercury is the sole planet in our Solar System without any moons due to its small size and weak gravity; too small for supporting one, plus closeness to the Sun makes survival of such bodies impossible. Its egg-shaped orbit lasts 88 Earth days and it may approach as close as 29 million miles to the…
People have long been afraid that seeing a red Moon signals the start of an imminent catastrophe, yet this phenomenon simply results from passing through Earth’s umbra (shadow). Umbral light passes through Earth’s gaseous atmosphere and is scattered in green and violet wavelengths that combine into coppery red hues, giving an overall coppery red tint….
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has returned an abundance of data about Saturn and its moons, which is revolutionizing our understanding of this fascinating planet. Since 2005, Cassini has conducted an in-depth investigation of Saturn and its rings and moons, uncovering mysteries but leaving others for future scientists to solve. On September 3, it will conclude its…
Our solar system is a collection of planets and other space material orbiting a star, the Sun. The Sun is the centre of the system, and planetary objects in the order Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto form its outer rim. The four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are…
The Solar System was formed 4.6 billion years ago by the gravitational collapse of an interstellar molecular cloud. It contains the Sun and its eight planets and their moons, plus a belt of icy dwarf planets and many asteroids. At the outer edge of our solar system, beyond the Kuiper belt, is the Oort cloud,…
The solar system consists of the Sun and the planets, natural satellites, asteroids, meteoroids and comets that orbit it. These objects range in size from microscopic dust to the largest planets. They all have certain characteristics that scientists use to classify them. These include size, temperature and composition. Planets In our solar system, a planet…
The Sun, the eight planets and their moons, and countless asteroids, comets, and other small, icy objects comprise our Solar System. The Solar System formed 4.5 billion years ago from leftover materials from the collapse of a cloud of interstellar material. The four inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, were rocky, but the outer…
