At the annual American Geophysical Union meeting, NASA scientists presented the results of the latest research on bright spots on the dwarf planet Ceres. In particular, the activity detected over time, especially by NASA’s Dawn space probe with variations in their brightness confirm the possibility that on Ceres there’s still a geological activity that is modifying this dwarf planet’s surface.
Yesterday at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting the new discoveries concerning Jupiter’s Great Red Spot of Jupiter and a new radiation area were announced. The data collected by NASA’s space probe Juno during a flyby on July 11, 2017 allowed to discover something new about that storm bigger than Earth, for example finding an answer to one of the crucial questions about it establishing that it’s about 300 kilometers (200 miles) deep.
An article published in the journal “Astronomy & Astrophysics” describes a research on the star K2-18’s system. A team of researchers used the HARPS instrument at ESO’s La Silla observatory in Chile to study the exoplanet K2-18b, discovered in 2015, which could be a larger version of the Earth. The analysis of the data led to the discovery of a second exoplanet, which was called K2-18c, a little less massive and closer to its star therefore probably too hot to be in its system’s habitable zone.
An article published in the journal “Nature Geoscience” describes a research on the consequences for the Earth of the bombardment that followed the formation of the Moon. According to a team of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) led by Simone Marchi, the collisions that followed the one that led to the birth of the Moon kept on increasing the Earth’s mass for a longer time than previously thought.
An article published in the journal “Icarus” describes a research that suggests new possibilities for the gravitational effects of trans-Neptunian celestial bodies to generate heat on other celestial bodies close enough such as in the case of Pluto and Charon. A team of researchers examined the influence of that type of heating on bodies that may have very low temperatures but that under certain conditions can host underground oceans whose duration could be lengthened.
