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Categories: Offbeat: Paleontology and Archeology, Space: The Solar System

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An exoplanet smaller than Neptune with its own atmosphere has been discovered in a region close to its star where no Neptune-sized planets would normally be found.

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Astronomers using the Gemini Observatory explore Neptune's largest moon Triton and observe, for the first time beyond the lab, an extraordinary union between carbon monoxide and nitrogen ices. The discovery offers insights into how this volatile mixture can transport material across the moon's surface via geysers, trigger seasonal atmospheric changes, and provide a context for conditions on other distant, icy worlds.

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Computer simulations provide compelling evidence that an insulating layer of gas hydrates could keep a subsurface ocean from freezing beneath Pluto's icy exterior.

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A deep learning approach to detecting storms on Saturn shows the vast regions affected by storms and that dark storm clouds contain material swept up from the lower atmosphere.

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Research team finds huge ice feature on Titan while trying to understand where Saturn's largest moon gets all of its methane. This research, which used Principal Components Analysis in an unconventional way, also validated results from previous Titan missions.

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The celestial phenomenon known as STEVE is likely caused by a combination of heating of charged particles in the atmosphere and energetic electrons like those that power the aurora, according to new research. In a new study, scientists found STEVE's source region in space and identified two mechanisms that cause it.

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Scientists have long known that Earth and Mercury have metallic cores. Like Earth, Mercury's outer core is composed of liquid metal, but there have only been hints that Mercury's innermost core is solid. Now, in a new study, scientists report evidence that Mercury's inner core is indeed solid and that it is very nearly the same size as Earth's solid inner core.

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On its final flyby of Saturn's largest moon in 2017, NASA's Cassini spacecraft gathered radar data revealing that the small liquid lakes in Titan's northern hemisphere are surprisingly deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane.

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A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world. This milestone sets the path for finding smaller planets around even smaller stars, and those planets may potentially be habitable.

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New findings have emerged about five tiny moons nestled in and near Saturn's rings. The closest-ever flybys by NASA's Cassini spacecraft reveal that the surfaces of these unusual moons are covered with material from the planet's rings -- and from icy particles blasting out of Saturn's larger moon Enceladus. The work paints a picture of the competing processes shaping these mini-moons.

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Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope document the formation of a Great Dark Spot on Neptune for the first time, report researchers in a new study.

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Giant planets like Neptune may contain much less free hydrogen than previously assumed. Researchers drove shock waves through two different types of plastic to reach the same temperatures and pressures present inside such planets, and observed the behavior using ultra-strong X-ray laser pulses. Unexpectedly, one of these plastics kept its crystalline structure even at the most extreme pressures. Since the icy giant interiors are made up of the same components as the plastic, planetary models may need to be partially reconsidered.

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Researchers have spotted the formation sites of planets around a young star resembling our sun. Two rings of dust around the star, at distances comparable to the asteroid belt and the orbit of Neptune in our solar system, suggest that we are witnessing the formation of a planetary system similar to our own.

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Solar storms can be far more powerful than previously thought. A new study has found evidence for the third known case of a massive solar storm in historical times. The researchers believe that society might not be sufficiently prepared if a similar event were to happen now.

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The latest data from the giant planets has sent researchers back to the drawing board. Cassini orbited Saturn for 13 years before its dramatic final dive into the planet's interior, while Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for two and a half years; the data collected has been 'invaluable but also confounding,' said one of the researchers.

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Using New Horizons data from the Pluto-Charon flyby in 2015, scientists have indirectly discovered a distinct and surprising lack of very small objects in the Kuiper Belt. The evidence for the paucity of small Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) comes from New Horizons imaging that revealed a dearth of small craters on Pluto's largest satellite, Charon, indicating that impactors from 300 feet to 1 mile (91 meters to 1.6 km) in diameter must also be rare.

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Researchers are offering new details about the suspected nature and location of a ninth planet in the solar system.

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After several years of analysis, a team of planetary scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has at last come up with an explanation for a mysterious moon around Neptune that they discovered with Hubble in 2013.

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The team of scientist showed that solar storms can accelerate particles simultaneously in several locations by combining data from the Low Frequency Array, LOFAR, with images from NASA, NOAA and ESA spacecraft.

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered another mysterious dark storm on Neptune and provided a fresh look at a long-lived storm circling around the north polar region on Uranus.