Articles

Stories, updates, insights, and original analysis from The Planetary Society.

Kepler announcement today: More than a thousand exoplanets including one 6-planet system

I wasn't able to watch the Kepler press briefing today so I will give you links to some of my favorite blogs for information on today's announcement, which follows a major data release last night as well as the publication of a paper in Nature.

Orcus and Vanth

As part of a big, ongoing project to make a comparison chart of the dimensions and physical properties of solar system objects I've spent the morning tackling the difficult problem of summarizing the physical characteristics of the biggest things that are out there beyond Neptune.

Planet Kepler-10b transiting its host star (artist's depiction)

Grab bag: "Rocky" exoplanet, molten lunar core, Rhea close encounter

The Kepler exoplanet hunting mission has made news today with a report of

Happy 2011, and an end to the 2010 advent calendar

Welcome 2011! I can't wait for what this year has in store. The prize for all of you who have enjoyed opening each door in the Planetary Society's 2010 advent calendar is one of the best views we can get of one of the biggest objects in the asteroid belt, Vesta.

Bill Nye with Bob Meyer and Pam Marcum aboard the SOFIA 747

A unique look inside the SOFIA telescope and other cool stuff

Did you know that before Bill Nye was the Planetary Guy or even the Science Guy he was an aerospace engineer, designing components for the Boeing 747?

365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: What's in a Science Meeting?

Today the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast aired my contribution, What's in a Science Meeting?, about what scientists do at big meetings like the Division of Planetary Sciences.

WISE's first brown (green?) dwarf

Look at the center of this star-studded image and you'll find an emerald green dot.

DPS 2010: Pluto and Charon opposition surges, Nix and Hydra masses, Pluto and Eris compositions

An awful lot of the talks in the Pluto session on Tuesday morning, October 5, at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting spent more time focusing on how bad weather conditions were during the astronomers' attempts to view Pluto as it occulted background stars than they did on any measurements or science that came out from the data.

Seeing Curiosity

I've been itching to get back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to get a good look at Curiosity, the next Mars rover.

An unusual Hubble photo of Mars

Amateur image magician Ted Stryk dug up this lovely view of Mars, captured on May 9, 2003 by the Hubble Space Telescope. This photo is unusual for its relatively high phase.

Neptune and Triton from New Horizons, July 2010

Neptune from two slightly different perspectives

Coincidentally, two new images of Neptune were posted today, from two very different sources.

From the Ground and from Space, New Planetary Systems Unveiled

Two nearly simultaneous announcements by scientists that they have detected entire planetary system deep in space have set the astronomical community abuzz.

How to Recognize Titan from Quite a Long Way Away

You know, I could fill this blog almost entirely with the amazing images that Gordan Ugarkovic locates, processes into prettiness, and uploads to his Flickr account.

WISE's scan of 50% of the sky for asteroids and comets

Progress on WISE's asteroid survey

I wrote some time ago about the expectations for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)'s contributions to solar system science. A couple of days ago, JPL posted an image and movie documenting the progress to date.