Aug 13
A possible super-Earth/mini-Neptune world hundreds of times more distant than Earth is from the Sun. Image credit: R. Hurt / Caltech (IPAC) By Ethan Siegel When the advent of large telescopes brought us the discoveries of Uranus and then Neptune, they also brought the great hope of a Solar System even richer in terms …
Jul 12
By Ethan Siegel Image credit: E. Siegel, created with Stellarium, of a small section of the western skies as they will appear this August 27th just after sunset from the United States, with Venus and Jupiter separated by less than 6 arc-minutes as shown. Inset shows Venus and Jupiter as they’ll appear through a very …
Jun 13
By Ethan Siegel When isolated stars like our Sun reach the end of their lives, they’re expected to blow off their outer layers in a roughly spherical configuration: a planetary nebula. But the most spectacular bubbles don’t come from gas-and-plasma getting expelled into otherwise empty space, but from young, hot stars whose radiation pushes against …