dwarf planet
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Webb Telescope Finds What May Be a Glowing Aurora on a Failed Star
The Webb Space Telescope has spotted something weird: a brown dwarf with what appear to be aurorae, what we Earthlings sometimes call the Northern Lights. What makes the observation particularly surprising is that the brown dwarf doesn’t have a nearby star that could cause such an aurora. Aurorae on Earth happens when particles from the…
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What Astronomers Thought Pluto Looked Like Before They Saw It Up Close
It’s been 91 years since amateur astronomer Clyde Tombaugh first spotted Pluto on a set of glass negatives. Since then, the object has been declared a planet, named, and, of course, demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006. Whatever its status, our fascination with Pluto has held fast. But until very recently, we didn’t have…
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I’m Afraid To Ask The Internet To Name This New Moon
Good news! Three space telescopes, including Hubble, have combined their celestial powers to spot a moon orbiting a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt — the region beyond Neptune where Pluto and countless other icy bodies live. According to NASA, the dwarf planet’s moon has a lot to teach scientists about how moons formed in…