But the weirdest of these worlds sit far from the Sun in the Kuiper Belt and share basic properties with Pluto. At the moment, these so-called Plutoids are mostly known from grainy images and via Earth-based detections of chemicals found on their surfaces.
That could soon change thanks to the next generation of large telescopes under construction in places like Chile and Hawaii. These instruments should reveal surface details better than even the Hubble Space Telescope can provide.
Many things are taking place:
Pluto's famous heart powers icy winds on the dwarf planet | Space
The dwarf planet's famous heart-shaped feature, which NASA's New Horizons spacecraft discovered during its epic July 2015 flyby, drives atmospheric circulation patterns on Pluto, a new study suggests.
Most of the action comes courtesy of the heart's left lobe, a 600-mile-wide (1,000 kilometers) nitrogen-ice plain called Sputnik Planitia. This exotic ice vaporizes during the day and condenses into ice again at night, causing nitrogen winds to blow, the researchers determined. ( Pluto's atmosphere is dominated by nitrogen, like Earth's, though the dwarf planet's air is about 100,000 times thinner than the stuff we breathe.)
Curious Kids: Why are some planets surrounded by rings? | News | elkodaily.com
For a very long time, Saturn was thought to be the only planet in our solar system with rings. The rings around Saturn were discovered by an astronomer called Galileo Galilei nearly 400 years ago. He used a very simple telescope that he constructed himself from lenses and pointed it at the planets in the night sky.
One of the first objects he looked at was Saturn. At first he thought that Saturn had two large moons on either side of the planet because his telescope wasn't very good and only produced very blurry images.
NASA's alien planet telescope moonlights in studying stars | Space
Astrophysicists are doing just that with the data gathered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). That spacecraft has spent a year and a half staring at bright, nearby stars, looking for the blips in brightness that can reveal alien worlds. But these dips can also represent different types of stellar hiccups, which means that TESS data is also a treasure trove for scientists studying how stars work.
"Really, TESS has been secretly all along a stellar activity and stellar variability mission," James Davenport, an astronomer at the University of Washington, said last month during the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held in Honolulu.
In case you are keeping track:
Flapping "Bat Wing" Could Reveal Secrets of Planet Formation
The shadow cast by a protoplanetary disk takes the shape of a bat — and over time, flaps like one, too, yielding clues to the planet-forming material in the disk.
This is the original image of the star's disk casting a bat-shaped shadow in Serpens Cauda, the Serptent's Tail.
STScI
A "bat wing" in the Serpens Nebula is providing a unique, indirect picture of planet formation. Astronomers are using new images of the young star and the flapping shadow it casts to reveal the system's protoplanetary disk.
How NASA, MIT find new planets beyond our solar system
NEW YORK — New planets are discovered orbiting stars outside of our solar system more often than you might think, and these exoplanets open up a world of possibilities.
Sara Seager, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's deputy director of science, spearheads the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite program.
Launched in 2018, the MIT-led NASA mission searches for other planets. So far, more than 1,000 candidates have been discovered.
17-year-old NASA intern discovers new planet
Most people sit through countless orientations on the first few days of their job, but one teen discovered a planet — on his third day.
Wolf Cukier, 17, of Scarsdale, N.Y., had wrapped up his junior year of high school when he headed off to intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., where he discovered a planet orbiting two stars.
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Danbury Student Recognized For Discovering New Planet | Danbury, CT Patch
DANBURY, CT — Danbury High School senior Alton Spencer's interest in stars and planets has outgrown our universe. In fact, the 17-year-old student is now being recognized as one of the researchers who recently discovered an exoplanet that is potentially habitable and roughly the size of Earth.
Using information from advanced satellites, specifically NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), Alton estimates that this exoplanet – 100 light years away – is orbiting a parent star with a radius and mass 40 percent of the sun and which is relatively two percent as bright.
Happening on Twitter
Sydney lovers of art and koalas : Support both of these interests @ Giant Dwarf. See some poetry whilst raising fu… https://t.co/9Hb1shzJJL AJemaineClement (from New Zealand) Thu Jan 30 06:10:54 +0000 2020
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