Planetary science articles within Nature

Featured

  • News |

    Novel design could help probe explore frozen environs on Earth and beyond.

    • Adam Mann

  • Books & Arts |

    From Roman reverence to dinosaur extinctions, Birger Schmitz is riveted by a history of the meteorite.

    • Birger Schmitz

  • Books & Arts |

    The Mars canal controversy is a reminder to be cautious when interpreting alien worlds, notes Michael Carr.

    • Michael Carr

  • Editorial |

    The hunt is on for a distant planet similar to our own. Astronomers should decide just how similar it needs to be, before the candidates start pouring in.

  • News Feature |

    Launched in 2009 to seek out worlds beyond the Solar System, the Kepler mission is exceeding expectations. Is it closing in on another Earth?

    • Eugenie Samuel Reich

  • Article |

    When an extrasolar planet passes in front of its star (transits), its radius can be measured from the decrease in starlight and its orbital period from the time between transits. This study reports Kepler spacecraft observations of a single Sun-like star that reveal six transiting planets, five with orbital periods between 10 and 47 days plus a sixth one with a longer period. The five inner planets are among the smallest for which mass and size have both been measured, and these measurements imply substantial envelopes of light gases.

    • Jack J. Lissauer
    • , Daniel C. Fabrycky
    •  & Jason H. Steffen

  • News & Views |

    Simulations show that the still-mysterious origin of Saturn's vast, icy rings could be explained by the 'peeling' by Saturn's tides of the icy mantle of a large satellite migrating towards the planet. See Letter p.943

    • Aurélien Crida
    •  & Sébastien Charnoz

  • Letter |

    Saturn's rings are more than 90–95% water ice, which implies that initially they were almost pure ice because they are continually polluted by rocky meteoroids. Saturn has only one large satellite, Titan, whereas Jupiter has four large satellites; additional large satellites probably existed originally but were lost as they spiralled into Saturn. Now, numerical simulations of the tidal removal of mass from a differentiated, Titan sized satellite as it migrates inward towards Saturn are reported. Planetary tidal forces preferentially strip material from the satellite's outer icy layers, while its rocky core remains intact and is lost to collision with the planet. The result is a pure ice ring.

    • Robin M. Canup

  • News & Views |

    New astronomical and laboratory data show that the abundances of the two dominant ices, nitrogen and methane, on the surfaces of the Solar System's two largest dwarf planets are surprisingly similar — raising fresh questions.

    • S. Alan Stern

  • News & Views |

    The discovery of an inner giant planet in the unusually massive solar system around the star HR 8799 creates an ensemble of planets that is difficult to explain with prevailing theories of planet formation. See Letter p.1080

    • Laird Close

  • Letter |

    High-contrast near-infrared imaging of the nearby star HR 8799 has shown three giant planets. Here, the presence of a fourth planet, interior to and about the same mass as the other three, is reported. The system, with this additional planet, represents a challenge for current planet formation models as none of them can explain the in situ formation of all four planets.

    • Christian Marois
    • , B. Zuckerman
    •  & Travis Barman

  • Editorial |

    An upcoming mission to Jupiter should include a piece of the famous astronomer.

  • News |

    As comet Hartley 2 comes into close view, researchers are lining up with questions.

    • Adam Mann

  • Letter |

    Asteroidal disruption, through high-velocity collisions or rotational spin-up, is believed to be the primary mechanism for the production and destruction of small asteroids. These authors report observations of P/2010 A2 — a previously unknown inner-belt asteroid with a peculiar, comet-like morphology — that reveal an approximately 120-metre-diameter nucleus with an associated tail of millimetre-sized dust particles. They conclude that it is most probably the evolving remnant of a recent asteroidal disruption in February/March 2009.

    • David Jewitt
    • , Harold Weaver
    •  & Michal Drahus

  • Letter |

    The peculiar object P/2010 A2, discovered in January 2010, is in an asteroidal orbit in the inner main asteroid belt and was given a cometary designation because of the presence of a trail of material. These authors report observations of P/2010 A2 by the Rosetta spacecraft. They conclude that the trail arose from a single event, an asteroid collision that occurred around 10 February 2009.

    • Colin Snodgrass
    • , Cecilia Tubiana
    •  & K.P. Wenzel

  • News |

    Sediment studies rule out impact as cause of ancient cold spell.

    • Rex Dalton

  • Letter |

    Rotational fission may explain the formation of pairs of asteroids that have similar heliocentric orbits but are not bound together. These authors report photometric observations of a sample of asteroid pairs revealing that the primaries of pairs with mass ratios much less than 0.2 rotate rapidly, near their critical fission frequency. In agreement with crucial predictions, they do not find asteroid pairs with mass ratios larger than 0.2, and as the mass ratio approaches 0.2 the primary period grows long.

    • P. Pravec
    • , D. Vokrouhlický
    •  & A. Leroy

  • Editorial |

    US astronomers' latest list of priorities holds valuable lessons for other scientific disciplines.

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