Astronomers Discover a Nearby Multiplanet System With Two Earth-Sized Planets
Located just 33 light years from Earth, the system appears to host two rocky, Earth-sized planets. A new multiplanet system within our galactic neighborhood has…
Exoplanet
New Clues to Mysterious Formation of Hot Jupiter Exoplanets
Astronomers discover a new way of determining the relative age of exoplanets and prove there are multiple ways these planets form. In our solar system,…
AI Reveals Unsuspected Connections Hidden in the Complex Math Underlying Search for Exoplanets
Machine learning algorithm points to problems in mathematical theory for interpreting microlenses. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems trained on real astronomical observations now surpass astronomers in…
Webb Space Telescope To Provide Details of Two Intriguing “Super-Earths” in the Milky Way
Astronomers will train Webb’s high-precision spectrographs on two intriguing rocky exoplanets. Imagine if Earth were much, much closer to the Sun. So close that an…
New Targets in Search for Extraterrestrial Life: Planets of Binary Stars As Homes for Alien Life
Nearly half of Sun-like stars are binary. According to new research, planetary systems around binary stars may be very different from those around single stars….
Astronomy & Astrophysics 101: Exoplanet
An exoplanet is a planet that is located outside our Solar System. While there is currently no formal agreement on what exactly defines an exoplanet,…
Stanford’s Futuristic Gravity Telescope Could Image Exoplanets – 1,000x More Powerful Than Current Technology
A futuristic “gravity telescope” technique conceptualized by Stanford astrophysicists could enable astronomical imaging significantly more advanced than any present today. In the time since the…
Astronomy & Astrophysics 101: Habitable Zone
The Habitable Zone is the region around a star where the conditions could potentially be suitable to sustain life on a planet, for example allowing…
Hubble Space Telescope Observations Used To Answer Key Exoplanet Questions
A worldwide team of astronomers studied archival Hubble Space Telescope observations of 25 hot Jupiters, allowing them to answer five unresolved questions important to our…
Webb Space Telescope Will Study Formation, Composition, Clouds of Distant Worlds
The journey of commissioning the Webb telescope continues this week with the successful cooling of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI), through the critical ‘pinch point,’ down…
Jupiter’s Twin: NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope Delivers New Planetary Discovery From the Grave
A new study by an international team of astrophysicists, led by the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics has presented the amazing new discovery of a…
Raining Vaporized Rock: Hubble Probes Bizarre Weather Conditions on Sizzling Worlds
Sizzling Worlds Vaporize Most of the Dust in Their Atmospheres “When you’re hot, you’re hot!” crooned country singer Jerry Reed in a top 1971 pop…
Hubble Finds a Massive Planet – 9 Times the Size of Jupiter – Forming Through a Violent Process
Hubble Finds a Planet Forming in an Unconventional Way In general, the formation of planets in our universe can be likened to cooking a meal….
Exoplanets: Weird, Wondrous Worlds [Video]
There’s a huge amount of variety among exoplanets – planets outside our solar system. There are water worlds, lava planets, egg-shaped worlds, planets with multiple…
Cosmic Milestone: NASA Confirms 5,000 Exoplanets – “It Is Inevitable That We’ll Find Some Kind of Life Somewhere”
The count of confirmed exoplanets just ticked past the 5,000 mark, representing a 30-year journey of discovery led by NASA space telescopes. Not so long…
How Do We Find Exoplanets? [Video]
How can we detect planets around other stars? Planets are very faint and small compared to the stars they orbit. To overcome this challenge, scientists…
Exploring Alien Worlds With NASA’s Webb Space Telescope: Searching for Biosignatures
One of the many goals of the James Webb Space Telescope is to help characterize the atmospheres of exoplanets using a technique called spectroscopy, which…
Rooting Out Planetary Imposters: Three “Exoplanets” Turn Out To Be Stars
Among thousands of known exoplanets, MIT astronomers flag three that are actually stars. The first worlds beyond our solar system were discovered three decades ago….
