Astronomers Obtain Precise Measurements of the Two Kepler-16 Stars
NASA’s Kepler mission discovered a world where two suns set over the horizon instead of just one and now astronomers from Penn State have precisely…
Exoplanet
Newfound Exoplanet is Slowly Disintegrating
According to calculations, an exoplanet similar in size to Mercury and roughly 1,500 light years away, is slowly disintegrating and leaving behind a trail of…
Tidal Heating Suggests Less Habitable Planets
Tidal heating, which is basically gravitational heating of a planet via tides, suggests that the number of habitable planets could be roughly half of what…
Revealing Data from Super-Earth 55 Cancri e
Sitting 40 million light-years away, researchers were able to gain a better understand of 55 Cancri e and its environment. Using observations from NASA’s Spitzer…
Three Earthlike Planets Could be Hospitable to Life
As NASA’s Kepler Mission continues to supply important data and continuously monitors stars for transit signals, astronomers from Cornell University focused on 80 M dwarf…
Simulations Show Jupiter’s Core is Liquefying
Scientists now have a better understanding of gas giant exoplanets and what is going on in their cores. By studying computer simulations, scientists believe that…
Atmosphere of Super-Earth GJ1214b Possibly Includes Abundant Water Vapor
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers probed the atmosphere around the transiting super-Earth known as GJ1214b and concluded that unless the atmosphere has a thick…
Researchers Analyze Earthshine for Life in the Universe
By analyzing earthshine and observing the Moon using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, researchers are using Earth as a benchmark for future discoveries of life elsewhere…
Researchers Examine Phase Changes for Insight to Planet Formation
Researchers have gained a deeper insight into planet formation by studying the phase changes between different types of melts. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…
Chemistry Might Influence Habitable Zones Around Extrasolar Systems
Trace elements in extrasolar systems might influence the evolution of habitable zones around their stars, where carbon-based life as we know it might dwell. Most…
NASA’s Kepler Mission Discovers 11 New Extrasolar Systems with 26 Exoplanets
NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems, with an additional 26 confirmed planets, which actually doubles the number of verified Kepler planets and…
Astronomers Hypothesize that Milky Way Might Be Teeming with Planets
In the past, astronomers had no evidence that there were planets orbiting other stars. Now, they estimate that the Milky Way might contain huge numbers…
Extrasolar Planetary System Suggests Our Own Isn’t That Special
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered the three smallest exoplanets ever detected. All of them are smaller than Earth, and the smallest is no larger than…
Milky Way Galaxy Has Over 100 Billion Planets
According to a recently completed statistical study by an international team of astronomers, our galaxy has at least 100 billion planets. Gravitational microlensing was used…
Three Smallest Exoplanets Found by NASA Kepler Astronomers
Kepler’s mission is to find potentially habitable planets around Earth size and smaller in a target region of the Milk Way galaxy. It’s had quite…