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Categories: Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound, Space: The Solar System

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Saturn, with its alluring rings and numerous moons, has long fascinated stargazers and scientists. After an initial flyby of Pioneer 11 in 1979, humanity got a second, much closer look at this complex planetary system in the early 1980s through the eyes of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft.

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Ancient hieroglyphic texts reveal Mayans made major discovery in math and astronomy, a researcher suggests. This study blends the study of Mayan hieroglyphics (epigraphy), archaeology and astronomy to present a new interpretation of the Venus Table, which tracks the observable phases of the second planet from the Sun.

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Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to two billion years of its early history, according to NASA computer modeling of the planet's ancient climate.

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New research finds that major volcanic activity on the planet Mercury most likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago. These findings add insight into the geological evolution of Mercury in particular, and what happens when rocky planets cool and contract in general.

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Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune. The new object is about 700 km in diameter and has one of the largest orbits for a dwarf planet. Designated 2015 RR245 by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, it was found using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, as part of the ongoing Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS).

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Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission have identified permanently shadowed regions on the dwarf planet Ceres where ice deposits could exist now.

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Astronomers are using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras -- stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere -- on the poles of the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter.

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Astronomers have found an explanation for the chaotic behavior of the orbit of Halley's Comet.

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Researchers have found that several volcanic deposits on Mercury's surface require mantle melting to have started close to the planet's core-mantle boundary, which lies only 400 km below the planets surface and making it unique in the solar system.

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Scientists have discovered an elusive, dark moon orbiting Makemake, one of the 'big four' dwarf planets populating the Kuiper Belt region at the edge of our solar system.

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Geologists trace Mercury's origins to weird, rare meteorite, and find planet cooled dramatically shortly after it formed.

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An updated thermal model for Pluto suggests that a liquid water ocean beneath the dwarf planet's ice shell is a fairly likely scenario, and that the ocean is probably still there today.

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Venus has an 'electric wind' strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping the planet of its oceans.

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Astronomers are researching the way in which celestial bodies orbit each other, now and in the future. This often turns out to be more erratic than you might think.

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Using computer models, New Horizons team members have been able to determine the depth of the layer of solid nitrogen ice within Pluto's distinctive 'heart' feature -- a large plain informally known as Sputnik Planum -- and how fast that ice is flowing.

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It happens only a little more than once a decade and the next chance to see it is Monday, May 9, 2016. Throughout the US, sky watchers can watch Mercury pass between Earth and the sun in a rare astronomical event known as a planetary transit. Three NASA satellites will be providing images of the transit and one of them will have a near-live feed.

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On 9 May there will be a rare transit of Mercury, when the smallest planet in our Solar System will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun. The last time this happened was in 2006, and the next two occasions will be in 2019 and 2032. During the transit, which takes place in the afternoon and early evening in the UK, Mercury will appear as a dark silhouetted disk against the bright surface of the Sun.

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Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet -- after Pluto -- in the Kuiper Belt.

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Solar storms trigger Jupiter's intense 'Northern Lights' by generating a new X-ray aurora that is eight times brighter than normal and hundreds of times more energetic than Earth's aurora borealis, finds new research.

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A student-built instrument riding on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft found only a handful of dust grains, the building blocks of planets, when it whipped by Pluto at 31,000 miles per hour last July.