NASA’s Kepler Mission Announces 715 New Worlds
Using a technique called verification by multiplicity, astronomers discovered 715 new planets from Kepler data. NASA’s Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new…
Exoplanet News
New Infrared Technique Detects Water in the Atmosphere of a Planet Outside Our Solar System
Using a new infrared technique, astronomers have detected water in the atmosphere of tau Boötes b, a hot-Jupiter planet outside our solar system. Water has…
New Research Reveals How Circumbinary Planets Form
New research from the University of Bristol reveals how circumbinary planets form. Like the fictional Star Wars planet, Kepler-34(AB)b is a circumbinary planet, so-called because…
Kepler Reveals a New Neptune-Size Exoplanet
Data from Kepler has revealed a new Neptune-size exoplanet that is located in orbit around a star in a double-star system 425 light years from…
HARPS Discovers First Exoplanet Orbiting a Solar Twin in a Star Cluster
Using the HARPS planet-finding instrument on ESO’s 3.6-meter telescope, astronomers have discovered three exoplanets orbiting stars in the cluster Messier 67 and one of the…
“Super-Earths” May be More Earth-Like than Previously Thought
A newly published study reveals that the odds of Super-Earth exoplanets having an Earth-like climate are much greater than previously thought. Massive terrestrial planets, called…
Astronomers Discover the First Earth-Mass Transiting Planet
While searching Kepler data for exomoons, astronomers discovered the first Earth-mass planet that crosses in front of its host star. Cambridge, Massachusetts – An international…
Five New Rocky Planets Discovered in Kepler Data
Researchers announced that ground-based follow-up observations of Kepler’s exoplanet systems have resulted in the discovery of five new rocky planets. More than three-quarters of the…
Hubble Reveals Cloudy Weather on Exoplanet GJ1214b
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, researchers from the University of Chicago have detected clear evidence of clouds in the atmosphere of exoplanet GJ1214b….
A New Technique for Determining the Mass of Exoplanets
MIT researchers have developed a new technique for determining the mass of exoplanets using only their transit signal, helping researchers determine the mass of exoplanets…
Newly Discovered Exoplanet HD 106906 b is Unlike Anything in Our Own Solar System
Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that is unlike anything in our own Solar System. HD 106906 b has 11 times the mass of Jupiter and…
Hubble Finds Signatures of Water on Distant Exoplanets
Using Hubble’s high-performance Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers have peered into the atmospheres of five distant exoplanets, finding faint signatures of water in their atmospheres….
Astrobiologists Search for Signs of Life on Dying Planets
Using computer models of the climates and biospheres, astrobiologists are researching how signs of life might look on dying planets. If life does exist anywhere…
Astronomers Estimate One in Five Sol-Like Stars Have Planets Conducive to Life
Based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler data, astronomers now estimate that one in five stars like our Sun have planets about the…
Kepler Data Reveal the Discovery of 833 New Candidate Planets
The latest analysis of Kepler Space Telescope data has revealed the discovery of 833 new candidate planets; ten of these candidates are less than twice…
NASA Study Reveals that Carbon Planets May be Waterless
Using planetary models based on measurements of our sun’s carbon-to-oxygen ratio, researchers found that planets rich in carbon, including so-called diamond planets, may lack oceans….
Astronomers Create First Cloud Map of a Planet Beyond Our Solar System
Astronomers used data from NASA’s Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of the exoplanet Kepler-7b. Scientists using data from NASA’s…
How to Distinguish Habitable Worlds Apart from Lifeless Gas Giants
A new study demonstrates how to distinguish between cloudy mini-Neptunes and volatile-dominated super-Earths based on the differences in the wing steepness and relative depths of…
