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The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
In August 1877, the American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered the two moons of Mars using a 660 mm (26 in) telescope at the U.S. Naval Observatory. [55] The names of the two satellites, Phobos and Deimos , were chosen by Hall based upon a suggestion by Henry Madan , a science instructor at Eton College in England.
Curiosity rover on Mars (5 August 2015). The Mars Science Laboratory and its rover, Curiosity, were launched from Earth on 26 November 2011. As of February 7, 2025, Curiosity has been on the planet Mars for 4446 sols (4568 total days; 12 years, 185 days) since landing on 6 August 2012.
Later in the same year, Norman Lockyer observed the same line in the solar spectrum, and concluded that it was caused by an element in the Sun unknown on Earth. This element is helium, which currently comprises 23.8% of the mass in the solar photosphere. [150] 1877 – Asaph Hall discovers Mars's moons Deimos and Phobos. [151]
The Noachian period occurred from 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, and little is known from direct measurements dating to the pre-Noachian period on Mars, between 4.5 billion and 4.1 billion years ...
In 1992, the first evidence of a planetary system other than our own was discovered, orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. Three years later, 51 Pegasi b, the first extrasolar planet around a Sunlike star, was discovered. NASA announced in March 2022 that the number of discovered exoplanets reached 5,000, of several types and sizes. [45]
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, an American astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Cold, dark and distant, it was named after the Roman god of the underworld . In Greek ...
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun.The surface of Mars is orange-red because it is covered in iron(III) oxide dust, giving it the nickname "the Red Planet". [22] [23] Mars is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, and its high-contrast albedo features have made it a common subject for telescope viewing.