PlanetsMoonsTo better understand Earth's present tectonic style-plate tectonics鈥攁nd how it may have evolved from single plate(stagnant lid) tectonics, it is instructive to consider how common it is among similar bodies in the Solar System. Plate tectonics is a style of convection for an ...
The gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are unlikely to support life, but their moons are potentially habitable. Pluto and other dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt are solid bodies with similarities to the outer planet moons, not least because some of the latter may indeed be Kuiper...
The outer planets show evidence of interaction with plutoids. Triton, thelargest moon of Neptune, is likely a captured plutoid, and it is even possible that the oddtilt of Uranus on its axisis due to a collision with a plutoid. Similarly to dwarf planets, there are potentially hundreds of ...
both Pluto and Charon orbit a point in space between them — their common center of mass. The other four moons in the system — Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra — orbit both Pluto and
Recently, the discovery of a gaseous debris disk with a composition similar to that of ice giant planets14 demonstrated that massive planets might also find their way into tight orbits around white dwarfs, but it is unclear whether these planets can survive the journey. So far, no intact ...
this influence, friction and collisions would cause the structures to disperse, losing the precise regularity that is observed. A precedent for this ‘shepherding’ is the way the gravitational pull of moons around Neptune and Saturn helps to create stable ring structures orbiting these planets." ...
Within our Solar System, giant planets have auroral emission with signatures across the electromagnetic spectrum including infrared emission of H3+ and methane. Isolated brown dwarfs with auroral signatures in the radio have been searched for corresponding infrared features, but only null detections have...
combined multiple observations using three telescopes at ESO's La Silla and Paranal observing sites in Chile—the Very Large Telescope (VLT), New Technology Telescope (NTT), and TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImalsSmall Telescope)—with data from other small telescopes in South America, to...
Icy moons of the outer solar system such as the Jovian satellite Europa andSaturn's moon Enceladusare thought to have underground oceans, which are apparently kept liquid by tidal forces generated by the gravity of neighboring moons and their huge host planets. Ceres would not experience such tid...
This discovery completes the list of outer solar system dwarf planets with known satellites: now all bodies larger than ∼1000 km in diameter are known to harbor moons (Pluto-Charon, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, Quaoar, Orcus). The existence of a satellite was originally suspected from the ...