#moonquakes

#moonquakes

Galileo Galilei described the moon using earthly comparisons, invoking images of sunlight on craters, which shaped early perceptions of the lunar landscape.

Hubble captured the planet's reflected visible light and highlighted Saturn's iconic yellow hues, which are, in part, a product of the sunlight-reflecting ammonia crystals and hydrocarbons such as methane in its atmosphere.

In the silent vacuum of space, five autonomous robots churn through the lunar surface, digging up a loose layer of rock and dust and leaving rows of uniform tracks in their wake. Stopping only to recharge at a central solar power station, the car-sized machines process the lunar dirt internally to extract a type of helium so rare on Earth that a palm-sized container is estimated to be worth millions.

Our new study suggests that the Apollo samples are biased to extremely rare events that lasted a few thousand years - but up to now, these have been interpreted as representing 0.5 billion years of lunar history. It now seems that a sampling bias prevented us from realizing how short and rare these strong magnetism events were.

Venus has long been known as Earth's evil twin. While they both are roughly the same size and formed in the same inner region of the solar system, Venus is far less hospitable to life as we know it. Its surface temperatures can reach over 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Its clouds are made of sulfuric acid, and its surface atmospheric pressure is almost 100 times that of Earth, the equivalent of being 3,000 underwater.

The solar system's most giant planet is slightly less of a giant than scientists once thought. Jupiter, a world that is so huge that it could hold 1,000 Earths, is eight kilometers narrower in width at its equator and 24 kilometers flatter at its poles than had been previously estimated, according to a new study. Textbooks will need to be updated, said Yohai Kaspi, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and senior author of the study, in a statement.

The sun is putting on a show. On Sunday the star unleashed several strong and bright solar flares, including one of the most powerful eruptions seen in decades. Far from the steadily glowing orb we sometimes picture, the sun's surface is made up of roiling plasma thrown about by twisting magnetic fields. When these fields snap, they can throw out huge bursts of energy and charged particles into spacea solar flare.