The International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center announced the discovery of three new moons, marking the first Uranian moon found in over 20 years and two additional satellites orbiting Neptune, one being the faintest moon ever detected by ground-based telescopes.
Recent research led by Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford has unveiled that Neptune and Uranus, traditionally thought to be distinctly blue and green respectively, are in fact much closer in color – both portraying shades of greenish blue.
Researchers using ground-based telescopes to track Neptune’s atmospheric temperatures over a 17-year period found a surprising drop in the planet’s global temperatures followed by dramatic warming at its south pole.
A new dark spot, dark vortex in the atmosphere, has been discovered on Neptune and confirmed this month by the Hubble Space Telescope. Though similar features were seen during the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune in 1989 and by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994, this…
A team of scientists at the Imperial College London have combined 26-year old data with supercomputer simulations and for the first time modelled Neptune's magnetic field in detail. The researchers find that the furthest planet from the Sun has a badly behaved
The Solar System once had five giant gaseous planets rather than the four it has today. That's the conclusion from a computer simulation of the Solar System's evolution, which suggests the fifth giant was hurled into interstellar space some 4 billion years…
The planets of our solar system are at tomes some of the most rewarding and simplest skywatching targets to spot, if you know when and where to look. Here's a look at how to observe the planets of the solar system in 2011: Tip: Astronomers measure distances in…
Skywatchers set your alarm clocks: On Tuesday morning (April 19), Mercury will appear to have a close encounter with Mars. In reality, the two planets will actually be separated by about 161 million miles (259 million kilometers), but in Earth’s sky they will…
