When stars like our sun die, all that remains is an exposed core—a white dwarf. A planet orbiting a white dwarf presents a promising opportunity to determine if life can survive the death of its star, according to Cornell ...
Astrobiology
Sep 16, 2020
4
392
Thanks to a bevy of telescopes in space and on Earth—and even a pair of amateur astronomers in Arizona—a University of Wisconsin-Madison astronomer and his colleagues have discovered a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting at ...
Astronomy
Sep 16, 2020
1
193
The dwarf planet Ceres—long believed to be a barren space rock—is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday.
Astronomy
Aug 10, 2020
13
8844
Planetary scientist Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely and associates have reported for the first time how solid methane and nitrogen expand in response to temperature changes and resolved an historic ambiguity relating to the structure ...
Space Exploration
Aug 6, 2020
5
274
New detailed observations with NSF's NOIRLab facilities reveal a young exoplanet, orbiting a young star in the Hyades cluster, that is unusually dense for its size and age. Weighing in at 25 Earth-masses, and slightly smaller ...
Astronomy
Aug 4, 2020
12
925
In February of 2017, the scientific community rejoiced as NASA announced that a nearby star (TRAPPIST-1) had a system of no less than seven rocky planets. Since that time, astronomers have conducted all kinds of follow-up ...
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2020
0
127
With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers have discovered two highly unusual brown dwarfs, balls of gas that are not massive enough to power themselves the way stars do.
Astronomy
Jul 10, 2020
2
1248
The nearest exoplanets to us provide the best opportunities for detailed study, including searching for evidence of life outside the solar system. In research led by the University of Göttingen, the RedDots team of astronomers ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2020
2
5314
The accretion of new material during Pluto's formation may have generated enough heat to create a liquid ocean that has persisted beneath an icy crust to the present day, despite the dwarf planet's orbit far from the sun ...
Space Exploration
Jun 22, 2020
3
2231
Among the more than 4,000 known exoplanets, KOI-456.04 is something special: less than twice the size of Earth, it orbits a sun-like star. And it does so with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures ...
Astronomy
Jun 4, 2020
0
426
