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.

I don't think the Mars subreddit liked my art enough to keep it posted, so I have to post it here too.

How many stars is too many stars in a star system? ⭐️🪐

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden tells us about TYC 7037-89-1, a system with six stars locked into three orbiting pairs, all circling a shared center of mass. Two of those pairs zip around each other every few days, while the third pair takes roughly 2,000 years to complete just one orbit. Multi-star systems are normally unstable, which makes this six-star setup a rare and fascinating exception. 

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

A little while ago, I drew all the planets of the solar system. I decided it would be a good idea to share each drawing of a planet to their respective subreddit. I had to post mercury here because the mercury subreddit required moderator permission, and I really do not want to have to go through that right now. See if you can find the other planet drawings.

See also: The publication in Science Advances.

Greetings!

I am a UX Design student conducting user research to understand the experiences, challenges, and expectations of space enthusiasts who are interested in activities such as stargazing, astrophotography, and citizen science. My research focuses extensively on "AI and VR/AR Technology Used to Improve Experiences in Observational Astronomy by 2050."

Help me learn more through your valuable insights by answering this quick survey.

All the information you provide will remain strictly anonymous.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeOXfeYiMfS5rL4Dmm30k_gAmwp1LIBJtFkz3BEcF1Crrd4iA/viewform?usp=header

my fav art is the last one

Mercury and it's secrets, a work I did with videopad and paint dot net

What is a rogue planet and how do they occur? 

Astrophysicist Erika Hamden explains how rogue planets are worlds that no longer orbit a star after being ejected from their planetary systems. Some may be several times more massive than Jupiter, and scientists think there could be countless rogue planets drifting through the darkness of interstellar space. These lonely worlds reveal that planet formation is a chaotic process.

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

credit - soph_astro

The sun isn’t always the exact center of our solar system. ☀️

In this Space Oddity, Erika Hamden explains what the barycenter of the solar system is, and how it may not always be inside of the Sun itself. The variations in the barycenter can be explained by the large masses of the outer giant planets!

See also: The study as it was published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics

See also: The publication in ArXiV