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A new, high-resolution analysis of a dust grain from the Allende meteorite documents the widely varying environments the grain wandered through in its 4.5 billion-year travels around the solar system.
Tag: planets
Keck observations reveal complex face of Uranus
October 17, 2012:
Uranus is so far from Earth that telescopes have typically seen little more than a blue-green blur, but new techniques employed with the Keck II telescope in Hawaii are revealing complex surface detail reminiscent of the solar system’s other giant planets, including Saturn and Neptune.
First rocky planet found around another star
January 10, 2011:
NASA’s Kepler mission was launched in 2009 to find exoplanets, and ideally, lots of rocky, Earth-like planets around other stars. Kepler team members, including Berkeley’s Geoff Marcy and San Jose State’s Natalie Batalha, Class of ’89, announced today the discovery of the first such rocky planet, dubbed Kepler-10b.
Jupiter gets its stripe back
November 24, 2010:
Astronomers using three telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii have recorded the return of a unique belt on Jupiter that periodically fades from dark brown to white. Its most recent fade-out started earlier this year, but November observations with the Keck, Gemini and Infrared Telescope Facility show the brown returning. It appears that reflected sunlight off high elevation clouds of ammonia ice have been blocking our view of the darker clouds below.
Study says solar systems like ours may be common
October 28, 2010:
A survey of 166 nearby stars like our sun reveals increasing numbers of smaller planets down to the smallest detectable planets – about three times more massive than the earth. If this trend continues, UC Berkeley astronomers estimate, one of every four sun-like stars may have an earth-like planet.
NASA mission asks why Mars has no atmosphere
October 7, 2010:
NASA has approved a mission to Mars called MAVEN that will collect data to understand why and how Mars lost its atmosphere. Half the instruments will be built at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory under the direction of physicist Robert Lin.
