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Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite -- temporarily designated P4 -- was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km). "I find it remarkable that...

There is something around the moon of Rhea. It's not a ring, and it sure is weird, say researchers.Back in 2005, a suite of six instruments on the Cassini spacecraft detected what was thought to be an extensive debris disk around Saturn's moon Rhea, and while there was no visible evidence, researchers thought that perhaps there was a diffuse ring around the moon. This would have been the first ring ever found around a moon. New observations, however, have nixed the idea of a ring, but there's still something around Rhea that is causing a strange, symmetrical structure in the...

What the rings would look like from different cities and latitudes across the world. It's interesting to imagine how it would effect culture throughout time. It would have influenced religion, mythology, navigation, etc.. Creator - Roy Prol SONG- Schubert's Ave Maria Sung by Barbara Bonney

NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious ribbon around our solar system —- a stripe made of hydrogen —- that defies all current expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like. Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, tells NPR's Guy Raz that this discovery is a big moment for the scientific community. "We thought we knew everything about everything, and it turned out that there were unknown unknowns."

Oct 7, 2009 — Saturn has a newly-discovered ring to add to its decor – the largest of all. It’s so big, it makes Saturn look like a speck in the middle of it. The ring, located at the orbit of the small outer moon Phoebe, is inclined 27 degrees and revolves backwards around Saturn. This was announced today by...

University of Arizona scientists have uncovered a curious case of missing asteroids. The main asteroid belt is a zone containing millions of rocky objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientists find that there ought to be more asteroids there than researchers observe. The missing asteroids may be evidence of an event that took place about 4 billion years ago, when the solar system's giant planets migrated to their present locations. UA planetary sciences graduate student David A. Minton and UA planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra say missing asteroids is an important piece of evidence to support an...

What happened to Saturn's rings? Amateur astronomers have noticed something different when they peer through their telescopes recently. "The rings have narrowed considerably in the last year," one said. "The Cassini division (a dark gap in the rings) is getting hard to see."

PASADENA, Calif. - New observations by a spacecraft suggest Saturn's second-largest moon may be surrounded by rings. If confirmed, it would the first time a ring system has been found around a moon. The international Cassini spacecraft detected what appeared to be a large debris disk around the 950-mile-wide moon Rhea during a flyby in 2005. Scientists proposed that the halo likely contained particles ranging from the size of grains to boulders. The finding was described in a study published in the March 7 issue of the journal Science. Unlike the rings around Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, the apparent...

  Edge-on image of Saturn's F-ring. Credit: NASA/JPL Cassini-Huygens mission.   Nov 12, 2007Kinks in Saturn's RingsBraids and twists in the rings of Saturn suggest activity in addition to gravitational attraction. Could electricity be one of the formative agents? Saturn's F-ring was discovered by Pioneer 11 during its 1979 flyby of the giant planet. When the Voyager 1 space probe passed by Saturn in November of 1980, it returned stunning pictures of Saturn's rings that were completely unanticipated. Two of the most intriguing discoveries were the "spokes" seen drifting above the ring plane and the twisted and interlaced structure...

Neptune is the planet farthest from the Sun (Pluto is now considered only a dwarf planet), Neptune is the planet farthest from the Earth, and to our knowledge, there has been absolutely no industrialization out at Neptune in recent centuries. There has been no recent build-up of greenhouse gases there, no deforestation, no rapid urbanization, no increase in contrails from jet airplanes, and no increase in ozone in the low atmosphere; recent changes at Neptune could never be blamed on any human influence. Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship...

LOS ANGELES - Saturn's majestic ring system, visible through backyard telescopes, just got a little more crowded with the discovery of a faint, new ring encircling the giant planet, scientists said Tuesday. The international Cassini spacecraft beamed back images this week showing the new ring, located inside the outermost E ring. The new ring crosses the orbits of the Saturn moons Janus and Epimetheus, leading scientists to believe tiny particles from the lunar surfaces gave rise to the ring. Saturn has seven major rings named A through G, although they are not arrayed in alphabetical order. The planet has about...

The two moons discovered around Pluto last year were likely formed from the same giant impact that created the planet’s much larger satellite, Charon, scientists say. The idea suggests that other Kuiper Belt Objects might also harbor multiple satellites and raises the possibility that Pluto is encircled by rings fashioned from debris ejected from the surface of the tiny moons. The two moons, called P1 and P2 for now, were discovered in May 2005 using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists now think the two moons are roughly 37 and 31 miles (60 and 50 km) in diameter. Charon has an...

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years. Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring -- the D ring -- have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years. Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring - the D ring - have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn. While scientists puzzle over what caused the changes, their observations could reveal something about the age and lifetime of the rings. Cassini-related discoveries...

from the January 29, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s02-stss.html Another giant leapScientists around the world are eyeing the moon as a future research lab and a gateway to space exploration, while companies look at commercial prospects.By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor It's been dubbed Earth's attic, a keystone for understanding the early history of the inner planets, and even a potential safe-deposit box for evidence of life early in the solar system's history. By whatever label, the moon's star appears to be rising. Even before President Bush unveiled his space policy earlier this month,...

Chalk up one more moon for Neptune. NASA announced the discovery of Neptune’s 14th moon Monday. The Hubble Space Telescope captured the moon as a white dot in photos of Neptune on the outskirts of our solar system. The new moon—Neptune’s tiniest at just 12 miles across—is designated S/2004 N 1. …

PASADENA, Calif. – Scientists on the Cassini mission to Saturn are poring through hundreds of images returned from the Sept. 10 flyby of Saturn's two-toned moon Iapetus. Pictures returned late Tuesday and early Wednesday show the moon's yin and yang--a white hemisphere resembling snow, and the other as black as tar. Images show a surface that is heavily cratered, along with the mountain ridge that runs along the moon's equator. Many of the close-up observations focused on studying the strange 20-kilometer high (12 mile) mountain ridge that gives the moon a walnut-shaped appearance. "The images are really stunning," said Tilmann...

The new moon could be related to Methone and Pallene A new moon has been discovered orbiting Saturn - bringing the planet's latest moon tally up to 60.The body was spotted in a series of images taken by cameras onboard the Cassini spacecraft. Initial calculations suggest the moon is about 2km-wide (1.2 miles) and its orbit sits between those of two other Saturnian moons, Methone and Pallene. The Cassini Imaging Team, who found the object, said Saturn's moon count could rise further still. New family The moon appears as a dim speck in images taken by the Cassini probe's...

For the first time, astronomers have glimpsed one of Uranus's 27 moons passing in front of one of its siblings – a fleeting alignment that can reveal information about the moons, such as their mass, that cannot be gleaned in any other way. Researchers hope this will be the first in a bonanza of data returned from Uranus in the next year. That is because Uranus, which orbits the Sun every 84 years, is in an ideal geometry to view its moons. Such periods come around only once every 42 years, and the next will not occur until 2049.This series...

The Cassini radar image (left) shows one of Titan's seas is larger than Lake Superior (right) Nasa's Cassini probe has found evidence for seas, probably filled with liquid hydrocarbons, at the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan.The dark features, detected by Cassini's radar, are much bigger than any lakes already detected on Titan. The largest is some 100,000 sq km (39,000 sq miles) - greater in extent than North America's Lake Superior. It covers a greater fraction of Titan than the proportion of Earth covered by the Black Sea. The Black Sea is the Earth's largest inland sea...