![]() ![]() Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium that surround a dense core and was also tracked by ancient cultures. It has several dozen moons discovered and being confirmed. Saturn is about nine times Earth's radius and is characterized by large rings how they formed is unknown. We've also rounded up Jupiter's unanswered questions to get a sense of future research, such as how it got enriched with heavy elements. Its atmosphere consists mostly of hydrogen, helium, ammonia and methane. Jupiter is visible with the naked eye and was known to the ancients. The planet is mostly made of hydrogen and helium surrounding a dense core of rocks and ice, with most of its bulk likely made up of liquid metallic hydrogen, which creates a huge magnetic field. It has a radius almost 11 times the size of Earth and many dozens of moons either confirmed or waiting to be confirmed. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) Gas giants in our solar system ![]() NASA says more than 4,000 exoplanets (opens in new tab) have been found by early 2022, a large proportion of them gas giants.Īn artist's depiction of the TESS spacecraft and some of the exoplanets it has spotted. Big observatories of the 2020s include the James Webb Space Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, both of which are expected to contribute to studying exoplanets.Īlready, too, we have a wealth of exoplanet data from observatories such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the agency's retired Kepler space telescope and the High-Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher on the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. "As many gaseous planets discovered around other stars exhibit significantly different characteristics from the ones in our solar system, science on giant planets has a huge multidisciplinary potential as a meeting point between the planetary and exoplanetary communities," Nature said.Įven since that era, the 2020s have been rich in discoveries thanks to the growing integration of machine learning and artificial intelligence to pursue datasets, not to mention the number of new telescopes seeing first light. Furthermore, Nature argued, gas giant research will be rich ground for different types of scientists to meet and share their knowledge. (Image credit: SHAO/Yue Xu)Įlements of research that caught scientists' attention in recent years included discussions of gas giant rings, and figuring out the source of auroras. An artist's depiction of zodiacal light at the surface of the planet Kepler-1229 b.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |