Astronomer’s Mind-Blowing Animation Shows The True Scale of Our Solar System

Sometimes it takes an animation on Twitter to truly comprehend – or at least begin to comprehend – the amazing diversity of worlds making up our Solar System.

Enter planetary astronomer James O’Donoghue from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). He tweeted out a brief animation that starts off with the Ceres dwarf planet, and moves up through Solar System objects by size (including Earth), before closing by zooming out to take in the Sun.

By Michigan State University May 1, 2022 All stars, including our sun, are born from a cloud of dust and gas. This cloud can also seed planets that will orbit the star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The findings have ramifications for how terrestrial planets like Earth developed, as well as the possibility that a fifth gas giant planet lurks 50 billion miles out into the distance.
“Our solar system hasn’t always looked the way that it does today.

Pluto’s reclassification as a minor planet in 2006 sparked worldwide controversy and a groundswell of sympathy for the demoted dwarf. But what if we told you that there might be another mysterious planet lying in the great reaches of our solar system?

There have been a lot of speculations in the scientific community regarding the existence of a mysterious ninth planet in our solar system — commonly termed ‘Planet 9’ or ‘Planet X’.

In this post, I’ll cover how electricity from a new Texas residential solar system is already cheaper than grid electricity costs.

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022, our residential solar system from SunPower was installed.

Grid cost in $ per kWh versus estimated solar system cost in $ per kWh over the last year for our house. You can see how solar is far cheaper in the summer. Chart by Vijay Govindan, CleanTechnica .

Stargazers were enjoying a cosmic treat this weekend as two of the solar system ’s brightest planets appear close to colliding in the night sky.

Venus and Jupiter are about 430 million miles apart, but viewed from Earth they appear to be almost touching in a rare celestial spectacle known as a planetary conjunction.

Researchers from Stanford University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have used computer models to analyze how Titan’s surface features like its dunes and plains might have formed. In between the rivers which cover its icy surface, there are also hydrocarbon sand dunes.

This seasonal cycle affects how dunes are created as well, formed from hydrocarbons which create sand grains. But sands on Earth are formed from robust silicate grains, and sands on Titan are formed from soft compounds which usually wear down into fine dust.

Everyone’s looking for a way to keep the lights on when the power goes out. With increasingly intense weather knocking the power grid offline for days at a time in some regions, traditional fossil-fuel–based backup systems—namely portable or permanent generators—seem increasingly unreliable.

For homeowners, multi-kilowatt batteries that charge from rooftop solar panels promise resilience in the event of a natural disaster—a reliable, rechargeable, instantaneous source of electricity to keep important devices and appliances running until the grid comes back online.

Sun King has announced it has raised $260 million in Series D funding, led by BeyondNetZero, the climate investing venture of General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm, along with M&G Investments’ Catalyst team and Arch Emerging Markets Partners.

The $260 million financing includes $100m in primary investment for Sun King’s continued geographic expansion.

Solar power would be the superior option over nuclear for crewed Martian missions near the planet’s equator, a new study concludes.

Researchers found that a six-person Red Planet mission could be sufficiently powered by photovoltaic systems, adding on to decades of research on the benefits of solar power as used by robotic NASA Mars explorers such as the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and the InSight lander.