The journal · The real sky
Solar system
The planets and small bodies as they are, separate from what tradition says of them.
9 articles.
Asteroid impact risk: what's being tracked
Nothing catalogued threatens Earth right now, and the 2024 YR4 story shows the system working.
4 min read
Jupiter's moons: what Galileo saw
Four points of light that broke the geocentric universe. You can see them in binoculars tonight.
4 min read
The Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
One is observed. One is inferred. Pluto lives in the first, and comets come from both.
4 min read
Mars in real life vs Mars in astrology
One object, two completely different descriptions. The gap between them is the subject.
4 min read
Europa, Enceladus and the search for subsurface oceans
Icy moons with liquid oceans under the shell, kept warm by gravity, not sunlight. Enceladus is spraying its into space.
4 min read
Why Pluto isn't a planet (the actual argument)
It wasn't demoted for being small. It was demoted because of what else turned up.
5 min read
Saturn's rings are disappearing | sort of
Two different disappearances, about a hundred million years apart. Neither affects your evening.
4 min read
Why Uranus is tipped over
An axial tilt of 98 degrees. It rolls around the Sun instead of spinning upright.
4 min read
Venus: Earth's hellish twin
Almost Earth's size, and 465°C at the surface. Something went badly wrong, and it's a warning.
4 min read
More in the real sky
The sky ahead · 2Sky events · 8Practical stargazing · 10Stars · 8Deep sky and cosmology · 8Instruments and missions · 7All sections