Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

May 25, 2017

Mysteries at Jupiter: NASA's Juno Probe Reveals Cyclones, Auroras & Surprises

Huge cyclones rage near Jupiter's mysterious poles, and the giant planet's powerful auroras are fundamentally different from Earth's northern and southern lights. Those are just two of the discoveries made by NASA's Juno spacecraft during its first few close passes over Jupiter's poles, mission scientists report in two studies published...

Jul 13, 2017

See Juno Probe's Amazing Up-Close Views of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (Photos)

You can now feast your eyes on the first up-close photos of Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot ever taken. On Monday night (July 10), NASA's Juno spacecraft zoomed just 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the mammoth storm's cloud tops — closer than any probe had gotten before. For generations, people...

Feb 8, 2018

Why Is Jupiter's Great Spot Red?

Jupiter's Great Red Spot has swirled for hundreds of years, but the source of its distinctive color remains a mystery. New laboratory experiments are working to produce that color — and others found in Jupiter's stormy cloud tops — here on Earth, and researchers have found that radiation and temperature...

Apr 13, 2018

These Hellish Storms on Jupiter Are Mesmerizing to Watch

Jupiter's north pole is a mesmerizing stew of glowing storms in a new video released by NASA. Using data from NASA's Juno mission, researchers created a 3D flyover of the gas giant's north pole in infrared. It shows the turbulent dynamics of the pole, which is topped by a huge...

Jul 17, 2018

Jupiter Now Has a Whopping 79 Moons

While hunting for the proposed Planet Nine, a massive planet that some believe could lie beyond Pluto, a team of scientists, led by Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science, found the 12 moons orbiting Jupiter. With this discovery, Jupiter now has a staggering 79 known orbiting moons —...

Aug 27, 2018

Why Jupiter's Rapid Growth Spurt Was Delayed for Millions of Years

New research suggests why Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, waited about two million years for its early-formation growth spurt. A team led by a Swiss researcher found that kilometer-size worlds smashed into the giant planet during that time, generating zones of high energy. This bombardment made it...

Mar 6, 2019

Here's Your Chance to Name 5 Jupiter Moons! (No Moon McMoonfaces, Please)

Last summer, scientists announced they had discovered a dozen new moons orbiting Jupiter. But now comes the hard part: naming them. The researchers announced that they want some help with that task, asking astronomy buffs to submit their name suggestions for five of the new discoveries. If you're up to...

May 21, 2019

Hidden Winds on Jupiter May Be Messing with Its Enormous Magnetic Field

Jupiter's magnetic field has changed since the 1970s, and physicists have proved it. That's not exactly a surprise. Earth's magnetic field, the only planetary field for which we have good ongoing measurements, changes all the time. But the new information is important, because these small changes reveal hidden details of...

Jul 16, 2019

Juno Finds Mysterious, Unexpected Currents Crackling Through Jupiter's Magnetosphere

There are turbulent, unexpected currents crackling through Jupiter's atmosphere, producing brilliant auroras. Juno, the NASA probe that has orbited the gas giant since 2016, passes over Jupiter's polar regions ever 53.5 days, collecting data on the magnetic forces that produce ultrabright auroras above the huge planet. In a new paper,...

Sep 3, 2019

Giant Ammonia Storms Are Screwing with Jupiter's Beautiful Brown and White Belts of Color

Powerful storms have erupted on Jupiter, and they're screwing up the planet's beautiful belts of white and brown. The storms, which resemble the anvils of cumulonimbus thunderheads on Earth, are blurring the neat lines separating Jupiter's different atmospheric bands. In a similar process to how anvil-shaped thunderstorms form on Earth,towers...

Sep 18, 2019

Giant Volcano on Jupiter Moon Could Erupt Any Day

The biggest volcano on the Jupiter moon Io should erupt any day now, a new study suggests. Loki Patera, a 125-mile-wide (200 kilometers) lava lake on the most volcanically active body in the solar system, has had fairly regular activity over the past few decades. And it's due for an...

Nov 27, 2019

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Storm Isn't Dying Anytime Soon

Despite the apparent shrinkage of clouds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the storm itself is still going strong, new research suggests. Jupiter's Great Red Spot represents the most powerful storm in the solar system. While earlier studies have suggested that the storm has been shrinking since at least the 1800s,...

Dec 14, 2019

Huge New Storm Creates Hexagon at Jupiter's South Pole

SAN FRANCISCO — NASA's Juno probe discovered a giant new storm swirling near Jupiter's south pole last month, a few weeks after pulling off a dramatic death-dodging maneuver. Juno spied the newfound maelstrom, which is about as wide as Texas, on Nov. 3, during its most recent close flyby of...

Mar 16, 2020

Jupiter's Great Red Spot may be shrinking, but its thickness is steady

Jupiter's Great Red Spot isn't shrinking in every direction, a new study suggests. Just a few centuries ago, the famous storm was about three times wider than Earth. But its swirl of angry winds is now comparable in diameter to our home planet, leading to some speculation that the Great...

May 5, 2020

Chaos reigns in detailed new views of Jupiter's icy moon Europa

(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute)Scientists have gotten their best look to date at three chaotic patches on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa thanks to decade-old images from a long-defunct spacecraft. NASA's Galileo spacecraft spent eight years touring the Jupiter system, between 1995 and 2003, and during that time it...