A densely packed planetary system at HD 10180

C. Lovis and colleagues at the European Southern Observatory in Chile used the 3.6m telescope there to discover 5 or more planets orbiting the star HD 10180. The five certain planets are all Neptune-class, having masses of 12-25 times that of Earth. Also, all orbit rather close to the star, at distances of 0.06-1.4 AU. There is also tentative evidence for an Earth-mass planet orbiting at r=0.02 AU, and a possible 3-Neptune-mass planet orbiting at r=3.4 AU. Ellipses in the above figure show the planets current orbits, while the colored regions indicate their range of motions over time that are due to their mutual gravities. As the figure shows, this system is quite dense with planets, which is actually rather typical for multi-planets extra-solar planetary systems. See the preprint for more details.

EPOXI spots snowballs coming off Hartley 2

The camera aboard EPOXI also spotted icy chunks jetting off the surface during that spacecraft's close approach to comet Hartley 2. The bigger chunks are golfball to basketball sized, according to this piece in New Scientist.

EPOXI spacecraft flys by comet Hartley 2

NASA's EPOXI spacecraft flew by comet Hartley 2 this morning. This comet is about 2 kilometers long, with a narrow neck only 0.4 km thick. Note the material jetting off the sunlit end, which is due to the sublimation of surface ice there. Keep an eye on the EPOXI mission page for more images as they get released.

Movies of Saturn's B ring

The outer edge of Saturn's B ring is controlled by an orbital resonance with the satellite Mimas, whose gravitational perturbations there give the ring-edge a scalloped appearance. That ring-edge has been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft that also orbits there, and several movies showing ring's complex movements are now posted at the CICLOPS website. The above image shows a closeup of the B ring's outer edge seen during equinox, when the sunlight was streaming nearly parallel to the ring place. Note the shadows cast by the bright material at the ring's outer edge. It is thought that these shadows are due to one or more small moonlets also hidden somewhere at the ring-edge. If so, then the moonlet's gravitational pull might be responsible for displacing the ring particles perpendicular to the ring plane, causing particles to pile-up into kilometer-tall mountains that cast those very prominent shadows.