Topic: Jupiter (Planet)

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What makes a planet livable? Five things scientists look for.

Scientists have so far detected at least 550 planets outside the solar system – and another 2,000-plus await confirmation. But how to pick out the ones that may be Earth-like havens for life? Here's what one team looks for in assessing any planet's potential habitability and its similarity to Earth's properties.

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Neptune moon: Tiny, dark, whizzing space ball captured on film (barely)

Neptune moon: Astronomer Mark Showalter used over 150 pictures of Neptune to find an almost-invisible moon of Neptune, bringing the total number of Neptune moons to 14.
Alien planet's mysterious blue color leaves scientists wondering

The Hubble Space Telescope helped scientists to identify the blue color of an exoplanet, giving researchers another piece in their understanding of the distant world. The alien planet has fierce winds and high temperatures, which turn rain into glass.
Summer solstice 2013: Longest day, best Mercury-spotting

This year's summer solstice, Friday (June 21) at 1:04 a.m. EDT (0504 GMT), also features a rare chance to see Mercury, the planet usually obscured by the sun's glare.
Unusual new planet casts doubt on how planets form

A distant, baby planet is challenging the reigning theory about how planets are made.
Life on Saturn's moon? How a mountain gave clues to a subsurface sea.

Saturn's icy moon Dione may hide a subsurface ocean, researchers say. They found clues to the hidden sea in the way a mountain range warped the surface of the frozen moon.
Tiny telescope's big discovery: Saturn-like planet orbiting an unlikely star

The Saturn-like planet has a well-studied cousin – the first alien planet found using the transit approach – to which it can be compared, right down to the makeup of its atmosphere.
Why do planets farthest from sun have highest winds? Team closes in on answer

The planets beyond Mars exhibit the highest winds speeds of any other planets in the solar system. It's a puzzle, because less energy from the sun is available there to drive higher winds.
How Einstein's theory of special relativity helped find a new planet (+video)

To find the planet, astronomers used Einstein's theory as it pertains to the intensity of a beam of light. The method could add more exoplanets to a growing list, no 'wobble' or 'transit' required.
What's a monster hurricane doing on top of Saturn? (+video)

A monster hurricane at Saturn's north pole, spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, has an eye 1,250 miles wide and inner eye wall winds of 330 miles an hour. Its energy source is a mystery.
Fireballs! 'Tis the season for massive meteors.

Tonight (April 23) through Friday at dawn may be your best chance of the year to spot a fireball, a meteor that shines brighter than Venus, the brightest planet in the sky.
How a humongous alien planet could explain how our solar system was born

The discovery of a colossal gas giant some 130 light-years from Earth could help explain the origins of our own solar system, say scientists.
A new form of microbe in Antarctic lake?

Russian scientists say that they have detected an "unidentified and unclassified" bacterium from a giant lake locked under Antarctic ice. But some have suggested that the samples could have been contaminated.
Alien planet photo: Telescope spots gas giant formation

Alien planet photo: In an astronomical first, a telescope in Chile has spotted the formation of a gas giant in the dust cloud orbiting a nearby star.
Little telescope to hunt big game: hard-to-see near-Earth asteroids

Canada's NEOSSat space telescope was launched Monday atop an Indian rocket. It will monitor two groups of asteroids whose proximity to the sun makes them hard to see from Earth.
Discovery of smallest planet yet a 'milestone' in search for another Earth

The Kepler space telescope has found a planet smaller than Mercury orbiting a distant star. The discovery suggests Kepler has the precision to find a planet more like Earth.
How Nicolaus Copernicus moved the Earth

Nicolaus Copernicus, whose 540th birthday is celebrated on Google's homepage Tuesday, kicked off the Scientific Revolution.
NASA's Voyager 1 hits a 'magnetic highway' out of the solar system

Scientists at NASA say the unmanned Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached the edges of the solar system. They estimate in a few months to a year Voyager 1 will become the first manmade object to leave the solar system and enter interstellar space.
Astronomers spot humongous star devouring planet (+video)

Astronomers have spotted a red giant star, some 11 times the mass of our own sun, swallowing up a planet. A similar fate awaits Earth, about five billion years from now.
Curiosity's Mars exploration: Is it worth the money? (+video)

The search for life on Mars has captivated the imaginations of many, but it is costly. Some say it's time to cut spending on NASA's Mars missions, while others say the research is important in the quest for understanding the 'meaning of life.'
Why we keep going back to Mars (+video)

The Mars Curiosity Rover scheduled to touch down on Aug. 5 represents mankind's 40th attempt to explore the Red Planet over the past 50 years. What is it about the Mars that keeps calling us back?
Pluto now has at least five moons. Can we go back to calling it a planet?

Long considered a planet, Pluto was reclassified as a 'dwarf planet' in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union. Will the discovery of a fifth moon prompt astronomers to reconsider?
Bizarre vortex spotted on Saturn's largest moon

NASA's Cassini probe has photographed a swirling vortex of gas high above the south pole of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Does Saturn's moon hide underground oceans?

Observations of how Titan warps as it orbits Saturn provides strong evidence for a liquid ocean buried under the surface of the gas giant's largest moon.
Life on Saturn moon? Discovery of hidden ocean on Titan tantalizes. (+video)

Scientists already knew Titan has the building blocks for organic life in abundance. Now, the discovery of a underground sea with liquid water adds another intriguing element.
Astronomers spot planet with boiling atmosphere (+video)

A planet roughly the size of Jupiter is spewing a huge plume of gas, an eruption caused by activity on its parent star.