I took a couple of weeks off blogging while I had my exams at the start of the month. This is what I missed. ESA has approved a billion-euro mission to Jupiter’s icy moons, called Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer). The spacecraft will (hopefully) launch in 2022 and reach Jupiter eight years later in 2030. [...]

Mars has always been the toddler of the rocky planet family. With a radius half that of Earth’s and a mass just over one tenth of that of our planet, it is bigger than baby Mercury but not quite as grown up as Earth and Venus. Now it seems that some unruly behaviour on behalf [...]

New analysis of data taken by the Cassini mission during its encounter with Jupiter in 2000 reveal that exceptionally clear atmospheric ‘hotspots’ effectively ride up and down in the Jovian skies as they are formed by what’s known as a Rossby wave – a phenomenon familiar to us here on Earth. The authors of the [...]

Jupiter’s enigmatic moon Europa has long been thought to contain a huge ocean beneath its icy crust, but what is in that ocean and does it ever come to the surface? Since the Voyager and Galileo probes explored the Jovian system, its moons have presented an extraordinary and fascinating puzzle. The largest of the 67 [...]

Of all the spacecraft humans have launched, there have been some impressively fast movers. But which holds the record? It’s not an entirely idle question. Apart from the wow factor, it’s an interesting yardstick for gauging our capacity to explore the cosmos, from familiar planets to the icy depths of space. However, as I quickly [...]

You may notice that today is the one year anniversary of the Scientific American blog network. You may also notice that across the blogs this morning is a shared theme; time for the readers to speak up. Inspired by the blogger Ed Yong, the Sci Am blogs are asking for your thoughts. Consider this an [...]

As we’re in the midst of experiencing some particularly stormy solar weather it seems appropriate to make a quick post with some nifty auroral images and time-lapse movies (see below). It’s also fun to point out that the phenomenon of aurorae (or auroras) is truly universal. Caused when high-velocity particles like electrons and protons expelled [...]

Gas giant planets are among the most beautiful and awe-inspiring worlds. In our own solar system we’ve long gazed at Jupiter’s extraordinary swirling atmosphere, where stormy circulations like the Great Red Spot persist for centuries. We’ve also been captivated by Saturn’s vast ring system, on average barely sixty or so feet in thickness but over [...]

Life, Unbounded is preparing a series of posts on exoplanets, one a day for five days – this planetary menagerie will contain some of the most fascinating, but unsung, “heroes” of exoplanetary science . In the meantime, since our closest gas giant world is once again bright in the increasingly wintery skies of the northern [...]

Another quick refurbishment from the archives, this one about the Juno mission to Jupiter. With any luck in a few hours Juno will launch and be on its way, arriving at Jupiter in 2016. This post was written while the spacecraft was still snug in its clean room.     The next post will be [...]

PASADENA—This week I’m here at the annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. Much as I enjoy Pasadena, it’s rather a comedown from last year’s meeting place in Puerto Rico. Leave aside the natural attractions: even the freeways in Puerto Rico are in better repair than California’s. Then again, we don’t come here for the earthly [...]

Backyard astronomers, take note: Jupiter and Earth are approaching their near-yearly rendezvous, and this time the two planets will be closer together than they have been since 1963. The giant planet’s proximity should make for good viewing, weather permitting—Jupiter will appear especially bright in the sky for several nights around its closest approach on September [...]

Story 5 In 2005, the dwarf planet Makemake passed between the Earth and a very bright star, casting a shadow known as an occultation. A new study of data collected from the occultation reveals that Makemake lacks an atmosphere. Links: Rare Apparition of Dwarf Planet Makemake Reveals a Largely Airless World Story 4 Internet billionaire [...]

Story 5 The winners of YouTube’s SpaceLab competition learned the results of their experiments in the first-ever livestream from the International Space Station. Links: YouTube Space Lab: From 250 Miles Above the Earth Story 4 Scientists have discovered a giant magnetic star with a mass 20,000 times that of the sun. Links: Giant Super-Magnetic Star [...]