Uranus News

June 26, 2025

Top Headlines

Ongoing Surface Modification on Jupiter's Moon Europa Uncovered

May 28, 2025 — A series of experiments support spectral data recently collected by the James Webb Space Telescope that found evidence that the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa is constantly changing. Europa's surface ice is crystallizing at different rates in ...

Innovative Approaches Advance Search for Ice on the Moon

Apr. 23, 2025 — Scientists and space explorers have been on the hunt to determine where and how much ice is present on the Moon. Water ice would be an important resource at a future lunar base, as it could be used to support humans or be broken down to hydrogen and ...

On Jupiter, It's Mushballs All the Way Down

Apr. 15, 2025 — Observations of Jupiter show that ammonia is unevenly distributed in the upper atmosphere, against expectations of uniform mixing. Scientists found evidence for a complicated but apparently real process associated with fierce lightning storms: ...

Tidal Energy Measurements Help Scientists Understand Titan's Composition, Orbital History

Feb. 13, 2025 — Scientists are studying Saturn's moon Titan to assess its tidal dissipation rate, the energy lost as it orbits the ringed planet with its massive gravitational force. Understanding tidal dissipation ...

Not All Hot Jupiters Orbit Solo

Jan. 15, 2025 — Hot Jupiters are giant planets initially known to orbit alone close to their star. During their migration towards their star, these planets were thought to accrete or eject any other planets present. However, this paradigm has been overturned by ...

Pluto-Charon Formation Scenario Mimics Earth-Moon System

Jan. 7, 2025 — A researcher has used advanced models that indicate that the formation of Pluto and Charon may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system. Both systems include a moon that is a large fraction of the size of the main body, unlike other moons in the solar ...

ESA and NASA Satellites Deliver First Joint Picture of Greenland Ice Sheet Melting

Dec. 20, 2024 — Scientists have delivered the first measurements of Greenland Ice Sheet thickness change using data from ESA and NASA ice satellite missions. With global warming causing the Greenland Ice Sheet to ...

Mysteries of Icy Ocean Worlds

Dec. 20, 2024 — A study introduces a novel thermodynamic concept called the 'centotectic' and investigates the stability of liquids in extreme conditions -- critical information for determining the habitability of icy moons like ...

Best Glimpse Ever Into Icy Planetesimals of the Early Solar System

Dec. 19, 2024 — New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in the early solar system and how TNOs evolve when ...

Uncovering a Centaur's Tracks: Scientists Examine Unique Asteroid-Comet Hybrid

Dec. 19, 2024 — Scientists recently led a team that found, for the first time, that Chiron has surface chemistry unlike other centaurs. Its surface it has both carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide ice along with ...

Heart of Jovian Moon's Volcanic Rage

Dec. 13, 2024 — A new study points to why, and how, Io became the most volcanic body in the solar ...

Uranus's Swaying Moons Will Help Spacecraft Seek out Hidden Oceans

Nov. 25, 2024 — A new computer model can be used to detect and measure interior oceans on the ice covered moons of Uranus. The model works by analyzing orbital wobbles that would be visible from a passing spacecraft. The research gives engineers and scientists a ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:37pm EDT

Impossible Signal from Deep Beneath Antarctic Ice Baffles Physicists

June 16, 2025 — A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes ...

Astronomers Just Found a Giant Planet That Shouldn’t Exist

June 11, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a ...

Planets May Start Forming Before Their Stars Are Even Done

June 9, 2025 — Planets may begin forming much earlier than scientists once believed during the final stages of a star s birth, not afterward. This bold new model, backed by simulations from researchers at SwRI, ...

NASA's Hubble Celebrates Decade of Tracking Outer Planets

Dec. 10, 2024 — A NASA Hubble Space Telescope observation program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) obtains long-term baseline observations of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in order to understand ...

A Clue to What Lies Beneath the Bland Surfaces of Uranus and Neptune

Nov. 25, 2024 — When Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune 40 years ago, astronomers were surprised that it detected no global dipole magnetic fields, like Earth's. The explanation: the ice giants are layered and ...

Saturn's Moon Titan Has Insulating Methane-Rich Crust Up to Six Miles Thick

Oct. 25, 2024 — A new study has revealed that methane gas may be trapped within the icy surface of Saturn's moon Titan, forming a distinct crust up to six miles thick, which warms the underlying ice shell and may ...

Liftoff! NASA's Europa Clipper Sails Toward Ocean Moon of Jupiter

Oct. 14, 2024 — NASA's Europa Clipper has embarked on its long voyage to Jupiter, where it will investigate Europa, a moon with an enormous subsurface ocean that may have conditions to support life. The largest ...

NASA's Hubble, New Horizons Team Up for a Simultaneous Look at Uranus

Oct. 11, 2024 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different ...

Widespread Ice Deposits on the Moon

Oct. 3, 2024 — Deposits of ice in lunar dust and rock (regolith) are more extensive than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission. Ice would be ...

Asteroid Ceres Is a Former Ocean World That Slowly Formed Into a Giant, Murky Icy Orb

Sep. 30, 2024 — A crater-rich dwarf planet named Ceres located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was long thought to be composed of a ...

This Rocky Planet Around a White Dwarf Resembles Earth -- 8 Billion Years from Now

Sep. 26, 2024 — A 2020 microlensing event was caused by a planetary system with an Earth-like planet and brown dwarf. The star type was uncertain. The team has determined that the star is a white dwarf, a system ...

Volcanoes May Help Reveal Interior Heat on Jupiter Moon

Sep. 19, 2024 — By staring into the hellish landscape of Jupiter's moon Io -- the most volcanically active location in the solar system -- astronomers have been able to study a fundamental process in planetary ...

Gargantuan Black Hole Jets Are Biggest Seen Yet

Sep. 18, 2024 — Astronomers have spotted the biggest pair of black hole jets ever seen, spanning 23 million light-years in total length. That's equivalent to lining up 140 Milky Way galaxies back to ...

Gigantic Asteroid Impact Shifted the Axis of Solar System's Biggest Moon

Sep. 3, 2024 — Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a researcher realized that the Solar System's biggest moon's axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which ...

Key to Rapid Planet Formation

Aug. 1, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new model to explain the formation of giant planets such as Jupiter, which furnishes deeper insights into the processes of planet formation and could expand our ...

Life Signs Could Survive Near Surfaces of Enceladus and Europa

July 21, 2024 — Europa and Enceladus, icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn respectively, have evidence of oceans beneath their crusts. A NASA experiment suggests -- if these oceans support life -- signatures of that life ...

The Origins of Dark Comets

July 10, 2024 — Up to 60% of near-Earth objects could be dark comets, mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system that likely contain or previously contained ice and could have been one route for ...

Glimpses of a Volcanic World: New Telescope Images of Jupiter's Moon Io Rival Those from Spacecraft

May 30, 2024 — Combining a new imaging instrument with the powerful adaptive optics capabilities of the Large Binocular Telescope, astronomers have captured a volcanic event on Jupiter's moon Io at a ...

New Discoveries About Jupiter's Magnetosphere

May 6, 2024 — New discoveries about Jupiter could lead to a better understanding of Earth's own space environment and influence a long-running scientific debate about the solar system's largest ...

Climate Change Threatens Antarctic Meteorites

Apr. 8, 2024 — Antarctica harbors a large concentration of meteorites imbuing the icy continent with an unparalleled wealth of information on our solar system. However, these precious meteorites are rapidly ...

Signs of Life Would Be Detectable in Single Ice Grain Emitted from Extraterrestrial Moons

Mar. 22, 2024 — Could life be found in frozen sea spray from moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter? New research finds that life can be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell. ...

Icy Impacts: Planetary Scientists Use Physics and Images of Impact Craters to Gauge the Thickness of Ice on Europa

Mar. 20, 2024 — New study reveals that Europa's ice shell is at least 20 kilometers ...

Giant Volcano Discovered on Mars

Mar. 13, 2024 — A deeply eroded giant volcano, active from ancient through recent times and with possible remnants of glacier ice near its base, had been hiding near Mars' equator in plain sight. Its discovery ...

Juno Spacecraft Measures Oxygen Production on Jupiter's Moon, Europa

Mar. 5, 2024 — NASA's Juno spacecraft has directly measured charged oxygen and hydrogen molecules from the atmosphere of one of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa. These observations provide key constraints ...

Ice Shell Thickness Reveals Water Temperature on Ocean Worlds

Feb. 29, 2024 — Astrobiologists have devised a novel way to determine ocean temperatures of distant worlds based on the thickness of their ice shells, effectively conducting oceanography from ...

Mimas' Surprise: Tiny Moon of Saturn Holds Young Ocean Beneath Icy Shell

Feb. 7, 2024 — Saturn's moon Mimas harbors a global ocean beneath its icy shell, discovered through analysis of its orbit by Cassini spacecraft data. This ocean formed just 5-15 million years ago, making Mimas ...

New Images Reveal What Neptune and Uranus Really Look Like

Jan. 4, 2024 — Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green -- but a new study has revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer in color than typically thought. The correct shades of ...

Ringing in the Holidays With Ringed Planet Uranus

Dec. 19, 2023 — NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, ...

Tiniest Free-Floating Brown Dwarf

Dec. 13, 2023 — Brown dwarfs are objects that straddle the dividing line between stars and planets. They form like stars, growing dense enough to collapse under their own gravity, but they never become dense and hot ...

Some Icy Exoplanets May Have Habitable Oceans and Geysers

Dec. 13, 2023 — A new study expands the search for life beyond our solar system by indicating that 17 exoplanets (worlds outside our solar system) could have oceans of liquid water, an essential ingredient for life, ...