exoplanets

NASA’s incredible exoplanet-hunting telescope is about to launch 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- April 16, 2018
TESS will give us a new view of our galactic neighborhood.

By David Aragorn
NASA’s K2 Mission Discovers 95 New Extrasolar Planets 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- February 17, 2018
Astronomers using data from NASA’s extended Kepler mission, known as K2, have discovered 95 new exoplanets, with sizes ranging from mostly rocky super-Earths and fluffy mini-Neptunes to Jupiter-like gaseous giants.

By David Aragorn
TRAPPIST-1 system planets potentially habitable 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- January 24, 2018
Two exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 system have been identified as most likely to be habitable, a paper by PSI Senior Scientist Amy Barr says.

By David Aragorn
Citizen scientists discovered an unusual new solar system not even NASA could find 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- January 18, 2018
In NASA’s efforts to explore the endless expanse of space, the agency eventually came to a realization: there is simply too much data. Missions like the one embarked upon in 2009 by the Kepler space telescope yield such a tremendous amount of data that there’s no efficient way for an individual scientist or even a team of scientists at NASA to pour through it all. That’s when they made a realization — instead of handling everything internally, NASA could make this data publicly available so that citizen scientists all over the world would be able to dig in.

By David Aragorn
Hubble captures blistering pitch-black planet 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- September 15, 2017
Astronomers have discovered that the well-studied exoplanet WASP-12b reflects almost no light, making it appear essentially pitch black.

By David Aragorn
Tides on exoplanets could drive alien biological clocks 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- July 29, 2017
Worlds with a permanent day and night side aren’t obvious places to look in the search for extraterrestrial life. Apart from having extremes of temperature, such planets would make it hard for a biological clock to get going.

By David Aragorn
New branch in family tree of exoplanets discovered 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- July 1, 2017
Since the mid-1990s, when the first planet around another sun-like star was discovered, astronomers have been amassing what is now a large collection of exoplanets—nearly 3,500 have been confirmed so far.

By David Aragorn
Recently discovered solar system could seed life between adjacent exoplanets 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 8, 2017
After NASA announced in February the discovery of a solar system with seven planets—three of which were deemed potentially habitable—UChicago postdoctoral scholar Sebastiaan Krijt began wondering: If a life form existed on one of these planets, could space debris carry it to another?

By David Aragorn
Our discovery of a minor planet beyond Neptune shows there might not be a ‘Planet Nine’ after all 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- May 6, 2017
Ever since enthusiasm started growing over the possibility that there could be a ninth major planet orbiting the sun beyond Neptune, astronomers have been busy hunting it.

By David Aragorn
Some ‘Tatooine’ Alien Planets May Be Able to Support Life 0
- From Around the Web, Space
- April 21, 2017
Life on an alien planet with two suns in its sky, like Luke Skywalker’s home world Tatooine in the “Star Wars” films, may indeed be possible, a new study suggests.

By David Aragorn