Planets

Artistic representation of the TRAPPIST-1 system with its planets seen from one of them (Image ESO/M. Kornmesser)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” describes the discovery of a solar system with three rocky planets that orbit the star TRAPPIST-1, a really small ultra-cool dwarf. A team led by Michaël Gillon of the Institut d’Astrophysique et Géophysique at the University of Liège in Belgium, found these planets with sizes and surface temperatures similar to those of the Earth using the TRAPPIST telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.

The dwarf planet Makemake seen by the Hubble Space Telescope with its moon indicated by the arrow (Image NASA, ESA, and A. Parker and M. Buie (SwRI))

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The Hubble Space Telescope has identified a moon of the dwarf planet Makemake. For the moment it was simply designated S/2015 (136472) and nicknamed MK2 and it’s a small moon with an estimated diameter of about 160 kilometers (about 100 miles). The discovery came from observations made in April 2015 using the Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument.

Artistic concept of the Venus Express space probe during an aerobraking maneuver (Image ESA–C. Carreau)

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An article published in the journal “Nature Physics” describes an analysis of the data collected by ESA’s Venus Express space probe during the final phase of its mission. After about eight years orbiting the planet Venus, in 2014 it was sent down lower and lower into the atmosphere, where it collected many new data before ending up getting destroyed. This allowed for example to discover the extraordinarily low temperatures of some atmospheric waves that have an average of about -157° Celsius (about -250° Fahrenheit).

Haulani Crater on Ceres (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA)

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NASA released new photos of various craters on the dwarf planet Ceres taken from its Dawn space probe, currently in its lowest orbit at an altitude of 385 kilometers (240 miles). From there, Dawn is making the most detailed mapping of Ceres and is providing really interesting details of craters that had already attracted the attention of scientists such as Haulani and Oxo.

Scheme of the brightness variation on the planet 55 Cancri e (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Cambridge)

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An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research that made it possible to map the climate on the exoplanet 55 Cancri e. It’s a planet already well known for the many studies carried out in recent years, in this case the Spitzer Space Telescope was used to try to get a better idea of ​​the existing temperatures on the surface of this super-Earth. They can reach extreme levels, estimated between 1,400 and 2,700 Kelvin.