Thirty years after the first exoplanets were discovered, hundreds of additional exoplanets have been identified within the “habitable zone,” a place where liquid water and maybe even life may exist. The MIT Press Reader asks, could a self-sustaining starship carry humans to distant worlds? https://flip.it/0q093h
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solarsystem
The so-called “great instability” event that sent gas giants careening through space until they settled into orbits occurred between 60 and 100 million years after the birth of the solar system. Migrating planets primarily Jupiter, it turns out, may have led to the formation of Earth’s moon. Live Science explains: https://flip.it/wWBTEy
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#OTD in 1892.
Amalthea becomes the last moon to be discovered without the use of photography. It was discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard and named it after Amalthea, fost-mother of Zeus.
Barnard used the 91 cm refractor telescope at Lick Observatory and was the first new satellite of Jupiter since Galileo Galilei's discovery of the Galilean satellites in 1610.
#OTD in 1789.
William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus, but little was known about it until the two Voyager spacecrafts, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981. Like many satellites of Saturn discovered prior to the Space Age, Enceladus was first observed during a Saturnian equinox, when Earth is within the ring plane.