News tagged with 'earth & planetary science' Subscribe via RSS

July 14 marks 50 years of visual reconnaissance of the solar system by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), beginning with Mariner 4's flyby of Mars in 1965.

Associate Professor of Astronomy Dimitri Mawet, who recently joined Caltech from the Paranal Observatory in Chile, searches for solar systems around other stars, and hopes to one day discover a planet much like our own.

In 1964, Caltech astronomy professor Guido Münch and Jet Propulsion Laboratory space scientists Lewis Kaplan and Hyron Spinrad pushed the world's second-largest telescope to its limits and dashed—at least for the next few decades—any hopes of finding liquid water on Mars.

Edward C. Stone was awarded a NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, presented by television personality Stephen Colbert on the December 3 broadcast of The Colbert Report.

Scientific authorities on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project announced on Friday that they have now signed a master agreement formalizing project goals and providing a governing framework for the international collaboration.

This Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of inaugural observations of the 10-meter telescope at W. M. Keck Observatory.

Thanks to a new high-tech gadget, astronomers have observed four planets orbiting a star relatively close to the sun in unprecedented detail, revealing the roughly ten-Jupiter-mass planets to be among the most exotic ones known.

John A. Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech, received the 2012 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize at the 221st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), in Long Beach, California.

A new era in planetary science began in 1962, when Mariner 2 and the 200-inch Hale telescope simultaneously took a close look at Venus.

The confirmed count of planets in other solar systems has skyrocketed to more than 850, plus thousands of identified candidates. The opportunity to characterize so many solar systems has brought together Caltech planetary scientists and astronomers, who are forming a Center for Planetary Astronomy.