You can’t step on Venus without a spacesuit. 🌡️🪐

Kyle Horn of MIT AeroAstro explains that with 90 bar of pressure and temperatures of 450°C, the surface could turn lead into liquid. But if you were in the middle atmosphere, 55 kilometers up, you could step outside with just an oxygen mask and good sunscreen to catch a Venusian breeze. Up there, gravity is about 90% of Earth’s, radiation is milder than in the upper atmosphere, and the pressure and temperature are similar to Earth’s surface.

2015 BP519 is now known as Geyagugv.

Discovery: 2015-01-17 / Dark Energy Survey / Cerro Tololo / W84 Geyagugv ( ᎨᏯᎫᎬ ) is a Cherokee metaphysical being called upon during a prayer as a ᎦᎸᎾᏘ messenger to aid in healing and wellbeing. Geyagugv is known to reside in the highest level, galvnati ( ), the sky-vault. This being is one of the many messengers between the Cherokee people and the Creator.

Two blue-green worlds near the edge of the solar system may conceal different histories beneath their clouds. Uranus and Neptune resemble each other in size and broad planetary structure. Their hidden chemistry, however, may preserve clues that their building materials came from different environments around the young Sun.

A study in Astronomy & Astrophysics examines that possibility using atmospheric chemistry and planet-formation models. Led by Tom Briand, the international team includes Southwest Research Institute scientist Olivier Mousis. The results favor a more oxygen-rich deep atmosphere on Neptune.

“Uranus and Neptune may resemble twins today, but their chemistry is telling us that they are more like cousins with very different histories,” Mousis said. That interpretation is promising, but remains dependent on models of inaccessible atmospheric layers and the disk from which the planets formed.

The Sun used to have no sun spots for a long period of time! ☀️

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains this phenomenon from 400 years ago called the Maunder Minimum. Normally the Sun follows 11-year cycles, peaking with lots of sunspots, solar activity, and coronal mass ejections before calming down at the trough. Scientists still don’t know why some cycles are more active than others, so this quiet period is one clue to what drives the solar cycle.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

See also: The publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters

Try, it's very cool
you can zoom in planets & moons

https://wjairplane.github.io/solar-system-map/?

See also: The publication in Nature Astronomy

The moon has a new once-in-a-century crater! 🌕

McGetchin crater is the largest new crater ever seen anywhere in the solar system, stretching almost 730 feet wide and 140 feet deep after an asteroid or comet the size of a 3-6 story building smacked into the lunar surface between April and May of 2024. Impacts this big are estimated to happen only about every 130 years, making this fresh crater a rare chance to study one up close with spacecraft like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Can life exist without a moon? 🌕

Theoretical cosmologist Paul Sutter explains how we are still answering this question. The moon protects the Earth in multiple ways, from blocking hits and forming craters as a result, to balancing out our weather with the axial tilt. To find the answer, scientists are now looking for planets with exomoons to study more!

See also: The study as it was published in Geophysical Research Letters

If Earth and Venus are so similar, why are they also so different? 🌎🪐

Kyle Horn of MIT AeroAstro explains that the two planets are roughly the same size and occupy neighboring orbits around the Sun. Yet Earth ended up with liquid water and a comparatively temperate climate, while Venus is a hellish 450°C under 90 bar of pressure, hot enough to melt lead. These diverging climates hold clues to how the early solar system formed. Understanding Venus, our closest planetary neighbor, matters even more now. Our current observation techniques are already biased toward spotting "exo-Venuses" rather than "exo-Earths" among distant exoplanets.

See also: The study as it was published in Nature Astronomy.

I am the author of this open-access scientific article. The review finds evidence of gold and other highly siderophile elements in Martian materials, but no proven deposit with sufficient grade, tonnage and continuity to classify it as an exploitable resource. Its main conclusion is that water, oxygen, propellants and structural materials would likely become economically useful before gold.

Article and DOI: https://doi.org/10.53673/th.v6i3.634

Did you know it rains on Saturn? ☔️🪐

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains that icy particles from the planet's inner rings rain down through Saturn's atmosphere, guided by its uniquely tilted magnetic field. Because that magnetic field is tilted relative to the rings, it pulls the ice along field lines and drives it into the planet, leaving darker infrared signatures in the upper atmosphere where the ring rain hits. It's one more mystery from this gas giant: its iconic rings are slowly falling into the planet, and scientists still don't know if Saturn will eventually consume them all.

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.

See also: The summary of the publication (in PDF format) in ArxiV and Physical Review Letters.

See also: The study as it was published in Science Advances.

The whole Solar System, one mountain, 8 km straight down. Bigger = heavier, so the Sun just goes through people. Sorry to the moons.

Why should we be exploring Venus instead of Mars? 🚀🪐

Kyle Horn of MIT AeroAstro breaks down how a 400 day mission to Venus could let astronauts conduct hands-on science in deep space, the same way Artemis II and Apollo 8 did. With three launch windows every two years and a trip that's far more palatable than the multi year round trip to Mars, Venus offers a practical proving ground for NASA's Moon to Mars architecture. It's a smart middle step: real deep space science, real system testing, without the long haul to the Red Planet.

This was a learning project to try to learn Odin, OpenGL and Physics/Math it evolved to be more of the latter :)

You can move time forward/backwards, change mass of bodies, delete and spawn new bodies.

It was pretty cool to see the partial solar eclipse with my own eyes while simultaneously watching it happen in my simulation.

It currently has

• Newtonian point-mass gravity between every pair, using direct summation below 600 bodies and a Barnes–Hut octree above. Units: G = 1, AU, solar masses.
• Velocity Verlet with a fixed 502-second timestep; symplectic and time-reversible. Reverse time uses the same integrator with the sign flipped.
• Real initial conditions from JPL osculating elements at 2026-01-01, solved through Kepler’s equation, composed barycentrically with parent reflex motion and pair μ = G(M+m), then integrated forward to the launch date.
• Full 3D orbits with inclinations and nodes for 23 bodies: Sun, eight planets, Moon, the four Galilean moons, Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Miranda, Titania, Oberon, Triton, Pluto, and Charon.
• Perfectly inelastic collisions on overlap: mass and momentum are conserved, and the larger body survives.
• Sidereal rotation for each body with the correct direction, plus analytic eclipse geometry using the actual Sun, occluder, and receiver discs.
• Validated against Horizons: epoch positions at the transcription floor, Earth within 33,000 km after 223 days, and the 2026-08-12 eclipse reproduced to within about half an hour.

I'm happy for any feedback or pointers.

https://github.com/lounge/sol_sim

Do you know Neptune and its moons’ strange backstory?

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains that moon formation, like planet formation, is a chaotic process. Neptune has one moon, Nereid, that might be the only moon that formed with Neptune, while the rest were captured into its orbit. A recent study using NASA’s JWST data hypothesizes that when Neptune captured Triton, its largest moon, it disrupted Neptune's previous moon system, and Nereid was the only survivor of the collision!

This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies.