Category Astronomy/Space

Sun-like star Kronos shows signs of having ingested 15 Earth masses worth of rocky planets, prompting Princeton astronomers to nickname it for the Titan who ate his young. This artist’s rendering of the diverse rocky planets in our galaxy hints at what Kronos’s planets might have looked like before the star enveloped them. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech)

Sun-like star Kronos shows signs of having ingested 15 Earth masses worth of rocky planets, prompting astronomers to name it after the Titan who ate his children. ‘Kronos’ is enhanced in metals and other rock-forming elements but not in volatiles, prompting a team to conclude that it absorbed as much as 15 Earth masses worth of rocky planets. Its twin, ‘Krios,’ does not show this unusual pattern of enhancement.

In mythology,...

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, behind the planet’s rings. The much smaller moon Epimetheus is visible in the foreground.

Extreme methane rainstorms appear to have a key role in shaping Titan’s icy surface. Titan, the largest of Saturn’s more than 60 moons, has surprisingly intense rainstorms, according to research by a team of UCLA planetary scientists and geologists. Although the storms are relatively rare – they occur less than once per Titan year, which is 29 and a half Earth years – they occur much more frequently than the scientists expected.

“I would have thought these would be once-a-millennium events, if even that,” said Jonathan Mitchell, UCLA associate professor of planetary science and a senior author of the research, which was published Oct...

Artist concept of Haumea, with the correct proportions of the main body and the ring. The ring is at a distance of 2287 kilometers from the center of the main body and is darker than the surface of the dwarf planet itself. Credit: IAA-CSIC/UHU

At the ends of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune, there is a belt of objects composed of ice and rocks, among which four dwarf planets stand out: Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea. The latter is the least well known of the four and was recently the object of an international observation campaign which was able to establish its main physical characteristics. The study, led by astronomers from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and published in Nature, reveals the presence of a ring around the planet.

Trans-neptunian objects are diff...

This artist’s rendering shows a large exoplanet causing small bodies to collide in a disk of dust. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

There’s no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy – they’re so distant and faint compared to their stars, it’s hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have established a possible signpost for giant exoplanets. A new study finds that giant exoplanets that orbit far from their stars are more likely to be found around young stars that have a disk of dust and debris than those without disks. The study, published in The Astronomical Journal, focused on planets more than five times the mass of Jupiter...