http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A research team of Japanese astronomers led by Dr. Hideaki Fujiwara (Subaru Telescope) has discovered a main-sequence star that is surrounded by a rare disk of quartz dust. Collisions of planetesimals, building blocks for planets, may have produced the dusty quartz ring during planet formation around the star. Based on observations with the AKARI and Spitzer infrared space telescopes, this recently discovered, intriguing feature of a stellar system may open new doors for research on the mineralogical nature of extrasolar planetary systems. http://phys.org/news255411011.html Space & Earth Sat, 05 May 2012 06:50:01 EST news255411011 An international team of researchers, with the participation of IAC astronomers, has discovered that the chemical structure of Earth-like planets can be very different from the bulk composition of the Earth. This may have a dramatic effect on the existence and formation of the biospheres and life on Earth-like planets. http://phys.org/news249225741.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:22:27 EST news249225741 The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the ‘habitable zones’ of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets around other stars is the primary goal of NASA’s Kepler Mission. http://phys.org/news245926289.html Space & Earth Mon, 16 Jan 2012 08:51:41 EST news245926289 There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research. http://phys.org/news245594984.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:01 EST news245594984 (PhysOrg.com) -- Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called microlensing. http://phys.org/news245572422.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:35:05 EST news245572422 Recently, I posted an article on the feasibility of detecting moons around extrasolar planets. It was determined that exceptionally large moons (roughly Earth mass moons or more), may well be detectable with current technology. Taking up that challenge, a team of astronomers led by David Kipping from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has announced they will search publicly available Kepler data to determine if the planet-finding mission may have detected such objects. http://phys.org/news245322065.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:20:01 EST news245322065 (PhysOrg.com) -- Oscillations have been discovered in 50 stars with their own orbiting candidate planets (exo- or extrasolar planets) by an international team of scientists using data from the NASA Kepler Mission, according to an announcement made by one of the lead scientists, Professor Bill Chaplin from the UK’s University of Birmingham, at a NASA conference in California (Friday 9th December, 2011). http://phys.org/news242892031.html Space & Earth Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:00:40 EST news242892031 In an article earlier this month, I discussed the potential for discovering moons orbiting extrasolar planets. I’d used an image of an exoplant system with rings, prompting one reader to ask if those would be possible to detect. Apparently he wasn’t the only person wondering. A new paper looks more at exomoons and explores exoring systems. http://phys.org/news241439547.html Space & Earth Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:32:40 EST news241439547 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a painstaking re-analysis of Hubble Space Telescope images from 1998, astronomers have found visual evidence for two extrasolar planets that went undetected back then. http://phys.org/news237138676.html Space & Earth Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:51:24 EST news237138676 Sebastian Elser, Prof. Ben Moore and Dr. Joachim Stadel of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in cooperation with Ryuji Morishima of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tried to estimate how common Earth-Moon planetary systems are. They have found that 1 in 12 Earth-like planets probably hosts a Moon-like satellite. Since the Moon might have played an important role in the history of life on Earth, this estimate is important concerning the search for habitable planets. http://phys.org/news235584043.html Space & Earth Sun, 18 Sep 2011 17:01:33 EST news235584043 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers led by a former UA graduate student has set out on the largest program to date exploring the alien atmospheres of "Hot Jupiters" - massive planets in solar systems far away from our own. http://phys.org/news233219958.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:30:01 EST news233219958 Hot on the heels of confirming one Kepler planet, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope announces the confirmation of another planet. Another observatory, the Nordic Optical Telescope, confirms its first Kepler planet as well, this one as part of a binary system and providing new insights that may force astronomers to revisit and revise estimations on properties of other extrasolar planets. http://phys.org/news232014822.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:40:09 EST news232014822 Any sulfurous molecules that astronomers spot on alien worlds might be a way to reveal whether or not those distant planets host life, researchers suggest. http://phys.org/news228664285.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:30:02 EST news228664285 In planet hunting today, there seems to be one burning question that nearly every new article published touches on: Where did these planets come from? http://phys.org/news227784530.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:29:07 EST news227784530 There are a lot of things someone could do in nearly 900 hours. http://phys.org/news226575689.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:41:46 EST news226575689 A recent study says that a particular mathematical technique could be used to detect forests on extrasolar planets. http://phys.org/news225114054.html Space & Earth Fri, 20 May 2011 12:41:20 EST news225114054 The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia counted 548 confirmed extrasolar planets at 6 May 2011, while the NASA Star and Exoplanet Database (updated weekly) was today reporting 535. These are confirmed findings and the counts will significantly increase as more candidate exoplanets are assessed. For example, there were the 1,235 candidates announced by the Kepler mission in February, including 54 that may be in a habitable zone. http://phys.org/news224157295.html Space & Earth Mon, 09 May 2011 11:20:01 EST news224157295 One of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet, was that of 55 Cancri. The first planet in this system was reported in 1997 and today the system is known to host at least five planets, the inner most of which, 55 Cnc e, was recently discovered to transit the star, giving new information about this planet. http://phys.org/news223561027.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 May 2011 13:17:39 EST news223561027 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using the super-sharp radio "vision" of astronomy's most precise telescope, scientists have extended a directly-measured "yardstick" three times farther into the cosmos than ever before, an achievement with important implications for numerous areas of astrophysics, including determining the nature of Dark Energy, which constitutes 70 percent of the Universe. The continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) also is redrawing the map of our home Galaxy and is poised to yield tantalizing new information about extrasolar planets, among many other cutting-edge research projects. http://phys.org/news217346447.html Space & Earth Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:01:04 EST news217346447 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers over the past decade have made remarkable progress in the study of extrasolar planets; over 500 distant worlds are now confirmed. Meanwhile, as this active research community continues to discover and characterize more planets and planetary systems, another group of scientists has been asking the question, "Where do these planets come from in the first place?" http://phys.org/news213361320.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:02:23 EST news213361320 (PhysOrg.com) -- This video clip was compiled from images taken by NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft during its flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4. http://phys.org/news208430018.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Nov 2010 09:14:15 EST news208430018 (PhysOrg.com) -- The EPOXI mission spacecraft has refined its path toward a Nov. 4 flyby of comet Hartley 2, successfully performing its final maneuver today at 8 a.m. PDT (11 a.m. EDT). The spacecraft burned its engines for 6.8 seconds, changing the spacecraft's velocity by 1.4 meters per second (3 miles per hour). http://phys.org/news207936627.html Space & Earth Tue, 02 Nov 2010 17:10:52 EST news207936627 Two movies derived from images taken by the two cameras aboard NASA's EPOXI mission spacecraft show comet Hartley 2 is, as expected, quite active, and it provides information on the nucleus's rotation. The spacecraft has been imaging Hartley 2 almost daily since Sept. 5, in preparation for its scheduled Nov. 4 flyby of the comet. http://phys.org/news207909976.html Space & Earth Tue, 02 Nov 2010 09:46:34 EST news207909976 In one of its final mission trajectory correction maneuvers, the EPOXI mission spacecraft has refined its orbit, preparing it for the flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4. The time of closest approach to the comet on that day is expected to be about 7:02 a.m. PDT (10:02 a.m. EDT). http://phys.org/news207479662.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:14:36 EST news207479662 (PhysOrg.com) -- Of the nearly 500 extra-solar planets that have been confirmed to date, only about a dozen have actually been seen in images. Because planets are so much fainter than their host stars, special techniques are needed to obtain such images, and even these work only when circumstances are optimum, for example, when the stellar system is viewed face-on and the planet is far enough away from the star. http://phys.org/news206370354.html Space & Earth Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:50:03 EST news206370354 (PhysOrg.com) -- There are now over 490 confirmed extrasolar planets. The vast majority are gas giants like Jupiter, but they are much stranger because many orbit close to their stars and so are much hotter than Jupiter (some are even closer to their star than Mercury is to the sun). http://phys.org/news205766068.html Space & Earth Fri, 08 Oct 2010 14:14:45 EST news205766068 Earlier yesterday, navigators and mission controllers for NASA's EPOXI mission watched their computer screens as 23.6 million kilometers (14.7 million miles) away, their spacecraft successfully performed its 20th trajectory correction maneuver. The maneuver refined the spacecraft's orbit, setting the stage for its flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4. Time of closest approach to the comet was expected to be about 10: 02 a.m. EDT (7:02 a.m. PDT). http://phys.org/news205059024.html Space & Earth Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:50:41 EST news205059024 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Pittsburgh planet hunters based at the Allegheny Observatory were one of nine teams around the world that tracked a planet 190 light-years from Earth making its rare 12-hour passage in front of its star. The project resulted in the first ground-based observation of the entire unusually drawn out transit and established a practical technique for recording the movement of other exoplanets, or planets outside of Earth’s solar system, the teams reported in The Astrophysical Journal. http://phys.org/news204874944.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:42:47 EST news204874944 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers, in addition to discovering extrasolar planets (about 500 of them currently have known orbital parameters), have detected excess, warm infrared dust emission around many stars. http://phys.org/news204552152.html Space & Earth Fri, 24 Sep 2010 13:31:50 EST news204552152 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bad news for planet hunters: most of the "hot Jupiters" that astronomers have been searching for in star clusters were likely destroyed long ago by their stars. In a paper accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal, John Debes and Brian Jackson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., offer this new explanation for why no transiting planets (planets that pass in front of their stars and temporarily block some of the light) have been found yet in star clusters. The researchers also predict that the planet hunting being done by the Kepler mission is more likely to succeed in younger star clusters than older ones. http://phys.org/news203332943.html Space & Earth Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:22:58 EST news203332943