Category Astronomy/Space

Finding Represents First Detections of Atmospheric Loss in “Mini-Neptunes.

Astronomers have identified two different cases of “mini-Neptune” planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets’ stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water.

“Most astronomers suspected that young, small mini-Neptunes must have evaporating atmospheres,” says Michael Zhang, lead author of bot...

Black holes aren’t always in the dark. Astronomers have spotted intense light shows shining from just outside the event horizon of supermassive black holes, including the one at our galaxy’s core...

New Leicester space research has revealed, for the first time, a complex ‘tug-of-war’ lights up aurorae in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere, using a combination of data from NASA’s Juno probe and the Hubble Space Telescope.

The study, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, describes the delicate current cycle driven by Jupiter’s rapid rotation and the release of sulphur and oxygen from volcanoes on its moon, Io.

Researchers from the University of Leicester’s School of Physics and Astronomy used data from Juno’s Magnetic Field Investigation (MAG), which measures Jupiter’s magnetic field from orbit around the gas giant, and observations from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph carried by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Their research provides the strongest ...

Planets are usually not much older than the stars around which they revolve. Take the Sun: it was born 4.6 billion years ago, and not long after that, Earth came into the world. But KU Leuven astronomers have discovered that a completely different scenario is also possible. Even if they are near death, some types of stars can possibly still form planets. If this is confirmed, theories on planet formation will need to be adjusted.

Planets such as Earth, and all other planets in our solar system, were formed not long after the Sun. Our Sun started to burn 4.6 billion years ago, and in the next million years, the matter around it clumped into protoplanets...