Topic: Jupiter (Planet)
Top galleries, list articles, quizzes
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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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Quadrantid meteors and 11 other big skywatching events of 2012
What lies ahead sky-wise for 2012? Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist, selected what he considers to be the top 12 "skylights" for this coming year,
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In Pictures: Timeline of American rockets
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Dwarfs
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In Pictures: Space photos of the day: Uranus
All Content
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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.
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Comet of the century? ISON has 'potential' to be visible all day.
As sun-grazing comet ISON approaches the sun, it's getting progressively brighter – and might even flare into a dazzling object bright enough to be visible in broad daylight.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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How Nicolaus Copernicus moved the Earth
Nicolaus Copernicus, whose 540th birthday is celebrated on Google's homepage Tuesday, kicked off the Scientific Revolution.
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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.
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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.
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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.'
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Astronomers use an old trick to open new window on extrasolar planets
Two teams of astronomers used a technique for finding extrasolar planets to directly measure one such planet. The approach could allow the study of more exoplanets' atmospheres than ever before.
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New method reveals atmosphere on 'Hot Jupiter' (+video)
Using a ground-based telescope to probe exoplanet atmospheres, which were visible only when illuminated by stars, scientists say they hope to study much cooler planets.
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Astronomers discover an 'odd couple' of planets
The Kepler spacecraft has detected a pair of extrasolar planets with orbits so close that at times the larger planet looms more than twice the size of the full moon in the second planet's night sky.
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Voyager 1 to become first man-made object to leave solar system (+video)
Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is now poised to become the first craft to enter interstellar space.
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Venus transit 2012: a chance to test Earth-hunting techniques (+video)
Venus's 2012 transit across the sun will let researchers test methods for observing Earth-like planets light years away. It's an opportunity that won't be available again until December 2117.
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4,700 asteroids capable of catastrophic damage lurk near Earth
The survey found there are likely 4,700 potentially hazardous asteroids in orbits that occasionally bring them close enough to Earth to pose a concern.
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NASA mission confirms: Ex-asteroid Vesta is a planet that almost was
Data from the orbiter DAWN confirm theories about the history of Vesta, which dates to the early days of planet formation. The protoplanet is also home to the solar system's second largest mountain.
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