Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Jul 15, 2015

Amazing Pluto Flyby Images to Be Unveiled Today

The world will get its first up-close looks at Pluto today (July 15). Early this morning, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will beam home the first haul of photos and other data it collected during Tuesday morning's (July 14) historic Pluto flyby. The space agency plans to unveil some of the...

Jul 15, 2015

Pluto Unveiled: NASA Photos Reveal Ice Mountains and Active Moon

LAUREL, Maryland — After 85 years as a mystery, the surface of Pluto is finally coming into focus, with a new NASA photo revealing towering ice mountains rising from its surprisingly youthful face. NASA today unveiled the first close-up photos of Pluto and two of its five moons as seen...

Jul 17, 2015

Mysterious Ice Plains Spotted on Pluto (Video)

Not far from a range of giant ice mountains on Pluto lies a vast stretch of icy plains whose surface is broken into cell-like blocks by snaking troughs, new photos by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft reveal. The engimatic region — which the mission team is calling Sputnik Planum, after the...

Mar 18, 2016

Beautiful, Bewitching Pluto Poses in New Images from New Horizons Probe

And the hits just keep on coming. Another batch of Pluto photos from NASA's New Horizons probe reveals the majesty and mystery of this icy world. The images are the latest releases from the treasure trove of data and snapshots captured by during New Horizon's close flyby of Pluto on...

Sep 14, 2016

Weird Red Spot on Pluto Moon Explained

Pluto may be sharing its atmosphere with its largest moon, Charon, creating the visually striking red spot at the satellite's north pole. New research suggests that conditions on the two worlds over the past few billion years would allow Pluto's traveling atmosphere to freeze out on the frigid moon Charon,...

Sep 26, 2016

Pluto's 'Heart' Hints at Deep, Underground Ocean

A new simulation of how Pluto got its heart suggests that the dwarf planet most likely has a deep ocean beneath its surface. Scientists have long suspected that Pluto has liquid water hidden underground. When NASA's New Horizons mission first set sail to the outskirts of the solar system, scientists...

Jan 23, 2017

Beyond Pluto: NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Heads to Next Adventure

To Pluto and beyond! Nearly two years after its historic encounter with the dwarf planet Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is getting ready for its next big adventure in the icy outskirts of the solar system. Now, the spacecraft is on its way to a small, ancient object located about...

Apr 26, 2017

Distant Dwarf Planet DeeDee Stirs Up the Pluto Planethood Debate

What's a planet? What's a dwarf planet? Should we make a distinction? Should we really care about these definitions in the first place? As we learn more about the outer solar system, the boundaries begin to blur. A tiny celestial body called 2014 UZ224 and informally known as DeeDee (for...

May 17, 2017

How Did Pluto Get Its 'Whale'?

In 2015, scientists learned that there’s a giant red whale on Pluto. This dark-colored region could be the mark of a giant impact — the same one that produced Pluto’s huge moon Charon, according to a group of researchers in Japan. The surface of Pluto — the biggest object inside...

Jul 18, 2017

NASA Unveils New Maps of Pluto, Moon Charon for Flyby Anniversary

On the two-year anniversary of the New Horizons probe's flyby of Pluto, mission scientists unveiled two detailed global maps of the dwarf planet and its largest moon, Charon. The combined data can now give the public insight about the mountains, volcanoes and canyons of these distant celestial neighbors. The complexity...

May 14, 2018

Is Pluto a Planet? That Is the Question ... Again.

The long-simmering argument about Pluto's planethood has just flared up again. For more than 75 years after its 1930 discovery, Pluto was regarded as our solar system's ninth planet — a distant and frigid oddball, to be sure, but a member of Earth's immediate family nonetheless. Then, in 2006, the...

Oct 1, 2018

Pluto Should Be a Planet and So Should Earth's Moon, New Study Claims

Sing along if you know the words: When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, that's a planet! That's what ancient Greek stargazers thought, anyway. And according to a team of astronomers writing online Aug. 29 in the journal Icarus, maybe it's time we started thinking of...

Feb 11, 2019

Ultima Thule Beyond Pluto Is Flat Like a Pancake (and Not a Space Snowman After All)

The final photos that NASA's New Horizons spacecraft snapped of Ultima Thule during the probe's epic Jan. 1 flyby reveal the distant object to be far flatter than scientists had thought, mission team members announced today (Feb. 8). We had an impression of Ultima Thule based on the limited number...

Jul 13, 2011

Neptune Shines in New Photos Marking First Orbit Since Its Discovery

The gas giant planet Neptune takes center stage in a series of sharp new photos snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the blue-green world's first Neptunian year around the sun since it was discovered in 1846. Today (July 12), Neptune completes its first trip around the sun...

Aug 19, 2011

The Greatest Mysteries of Neptune

Each week, Life's Little Mysteries presents The Greatest Mysteries of the Cosmos, starting with the coolest things in our solar system. Back in 1846, when European astronomers quarreled over what to call a newly found eighth planet, they eventually settled on Neptune, after the Roman god of the sea. The...