Where is the solar system’s water?

Isn’t it amazing that astronomy – humanity’s oldest science – continues to generate such a delightful amount of new knowledge? Seeing as we’ve been studying the motion of the stars for a good long whi

It’s difficult to fully grasp the enormity and extremity of Jupiter. The planet – a striped behemoth of swirling gas with around 100 moons, one of which is larger than Mercury – dominates the Solar Sy

The prospect of life on Mars – Earth’s planetary next-door neighbour, an alien world that betrays tantalising hints of a watery past – has bewitched humanity for centuries. From the ‘canals’ seen by a

Our Solar System is home to hundreds of moons, but how many can you observe? Some – like our own and the brighter ones around Jupiter and Saturn – are relatively easy to see with the naked eye, binocu

To make a planet, first you’ll need a massive, reasonably dense cloud of cold gas and dust. Luckily, later generations of the cosmos have provided just that. These clouds, rich in hydrogen, helium and

One of the Cassini orbiter’s stand-out discoveries in the Saturn system was plumes of water-ice erupting from fissures in the moon Enceladus. These ice particles make up the diffuse E ring surrounding