The Daily Croissant

"Venus and Earth describe a unique orbital configuration with respect to the Sun. The resonance between the two planets is readily apparent when a plot of their movements is made over the course of eight years.

Every couple of centuries, the two planets are in close enough alignment that Venus crosses the face of the Sun twice in eight years. Between that pair of crossings, there is a gap of 121.5 years, then two transits in eight years, then a gap of 105.5 years, then two transits, then a gap of 121.5 years, and so on. Why this odd time interval?

Beginning with a transit alignment, as Venus and Earth orbit the Sun, Venus laps Earth in its orbit after 1.6 Earth years, or 2.6 Venusian years. The fifth time that Venus catches up with Earth, after eight years, they are back at their starting point again. The reason there is no transit every eight years is that the orbit of Venus is inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, taking it slightly above or below a line-of-sight with Earth.

After five Venus-Earth conjunctions, they are also slightly clockwise from their starting positions. It takes 105.5 and 121.5 years for them to regress to their eight year transit pairs and shift from June to December. In 2117, Venus will perform during early December.

Thus, Venus is in near resonance with Earth. In order for an exact orbital resonance to exist, Venus would have to revolve in 243.16 days, but its actual period is 243.01 days. This close alignment suggests that it might be moving out of a resonant pattern that once was more precise."

The planet Uranus with a few of its moons.
Credit: NASA/ESA and H. B. Hammel

"Uranus recently erupted with a new bright region in its lower latitudes. Could electrical effects be responsible ?"

Credit: Simulation by Ceverino, Dekel & Primack

"Is there any place in space which hasn’t been affected by time ? The answer is yes. Thanks to some very awesome research, the W. M. Keck Observatory and a team of scientists have recently located two clumps of primordial gas which may very well have had its origin within minutes of the Big Bang.

How do we know these gas clouds are so special? In this case, they are simply too disseminated to enable stellar birth and contain no heavy metals which would support it. These diaphanous regions are pure hydrogen and helium… along with a heavier isotope, deuterium. This combination could mean the two billion year old regions are pure – never involved in the star-forming process. An exciting discovery ? You bet. The clouds could have possibly survived in an unchanged state – giving us a look at what may have occurred at the dawn of time."

"Two spiral arms emerge from the gas-rich disk around SAO 206462, a young star in the constellation Lupus. This image, acquired by the Subaru Telescope and its HiCIAO instrument, is the first to show spiral arms in a circumstellar disk. The disk itself is some 14 billion miles across, or about twice the size of Pluto's orbit in our own solar system.  

This recent discovery of a star with spiral arms startled researchers using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. SAO 206462 is more than four hundred light years from Earth in the constellation Lupus, the wolf."

"At a 98 degree inclination, Uranus and its satellites have always been somewhat of a mystery to planetary scientists. While many of the Solar Systems planets have an inclined axis, none can compare with nearly being on its side.  

Popular theory on how Uranus ended up with a highly eccentric axis has always been pretty standard – one giant blow. However, at today’s (October 6) EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting in Nantes, astronomers are thinking things may have occurred slightly differently. Instead of a singular impact, the glowing blue-green gas giant may have been the victim of a series of smaller punches."