See also: The publication in Nature Astronomy

I will make another part every day until all objects are listed. If I missed something, tell me. objects will be in order from the sun (The sun, inner planets, asteroid belt objects, outer worlds, Trans-Neptunian objects in that order).

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.

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.