Meteor showers provide some of the most awe inspiring celestial events of the year. As would agree any stargazer fortunate enough to have seen a particularly prolific meteor shower raining down dozens of “shooting stars” […]
The dwarf planet designated 136199 Eris is named after the Greek goddess of strife, while its satellite, designated Dysnomia, is named after the goddess of lawlessness, who incidentally was Eris’ daughter. Eris is the most […]
Phobos is the larger and nearest of Mars’ two natural satellites, the other being Deimos. Both moons were discovered a few days apart in 1877 by American astronomer Asaph Hall from the U.S. Naval Observatory […]
The image above shows the dwarf planet 136472 Makemake, which with a diameter roughly 60% that of Pluto is possibly the biggest object in the “classical population” of the Kuiper belt. Upon its discovery by […]
The dwarf planet designated 136108 Haumea and its two satellites were discovered by Mike Brown et al. (Caltech) at Palomar Observatory in 2004. Haumea is the largest member of its collisional family, a group of […]
The image above shows a near true color picture of the dwarf planet designated 134340 Pluto, the first object to be discovered in the Kuiper Belt after Clyde Tombaugh identified it in 1930. Pluto is […]
The image above includes a light-curve derived 3D model of the C-type asteroid designated 10 Hygiea, the fourth largest asteroid in the solar system by both volume and mass, the latter of which is estimated […]
The image above shows the somewhat oblate shape of the B-type asteroid designated 2 Pallas, which is the second asteroid to be discovered, and the third most massive, containing about 7% of all the mass […]
The asteroid designated 4 Vesta is one of the largest objects in the asteroid belt with a diameter of 525 kilometres (326 miles). Discovered by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers on 29 March 1807, and named after […]
The image above shows a near true color picture of the C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid 1 Ceres, the first asteroid ever to be discovered, and the biggest object in the asteroid belt. With a diameter of […]
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