Dwarf planet Ceres may be home to an underground ocean
10 August 2020
New analysis of data from the Dawn spacecraft suggests there may be a liquid water ocean beneath the Occator crater on Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system
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Found 465 results for dwarf planet
Earth-sized exoplanets around small stars may have intense hurricanes
14 July 2020
Hurricanes may be common on exoplanets that orbit small, red stars over the course of about 10 days, and they are most likely to form on planets that are tidally locked, and so have one side with perpetual daytime
Pluto's tiny moons may have been chipped off its biggest moon
30 June 2020
Pluto has one very large moon, Charon, and four tiny ones, leaving astronomers confused as to how they formed. The answer may be that the quartet used to be part of Charon, not Pluto
Three exoplanets are close enough for us to see their atmospheres
25 June 2020
A star just 11 light years away is calm enough that we may be able to study the atmospheres of three planets that seem to orbit it – one of which could be in the star's habitable zone
Vast worlds called brown dwarfs have extraordinarily powerful winds
9 April 2020
Brown dwarfs, which are halfway between huge planets and small stars, have extremely powerful winds whipping around them at speeds of about 650 metres per second
Pluto formed quickly with a deep ocean covering its entire surface
30 March 2020
Pluto’s ancient oceans may have come about just after the icy world was born, melting from ice in a process that suggests the dwarf planet took just 30,000 years to form
Solar flares and cosmic rays may make Proxima b warm enough for life
12 March 2020
Proxima Centauri b, a planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbour, is being blasted with cosmic rays and solar flares – which could make it warm enough to host life
Weird star was born when two white dwarfs merged instead of blowing up
2 March 2020
White dwarf stars are common in the galaxy, but astronomers have found one that doesn't seem to obey the rules. They think it was born when two smaller white dwarfs merged together
An exoplanet is generating radio waves from its red dwarf sun
17 February 2020
For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet by detecting radio waves generated by interactions with its parent star
Pluto's icy nitrogen heart makes its atmosphere spin backwards
5 February 2020
Every day on Pluto, nitrogen puffs out the icy world’s heart-shaped plain into the atmosphere, and every night it refreezes, creating winds unlike any we’ve seen before
