News tagged with dwarf planet
Related topics: solar system
Ultra-cool companion helps reveal giant planets
(Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has ...
May 10, 2012 |
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Many billions of rocky planets in the habitable zones around red dwarfs in the Milky Way
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new result from ESOs HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates ...
Mar 28, 2012 |
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Space image: Compact planetary system
(PhysOrg.com) -- This artist's concept depicts a planetary system so compact that it's more like Jupiter and its moons than a star and its planets. Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission and ground-based ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Mar 15, 2012 |
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Extending the habitable zone for red dwarf stars
Scientists have long thought that planets had to orbit very close to small and dim red dwarf stars in order to be warm enough for life. New research challenges that assumption.
Feb 24, 2012 |
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A star with spiral arms
For more than four hundred years, astronomers have used telescopes to study the great variety of stars in our galaxy. Millions of distant suns have been catalogued. There are dwarf stars, giant stars, dead ...
Nov 01, 2011 |
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Faraway Eris is Pluto's twin: Dwarf planet sized up accurately as it blocks light of faint star
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have measured the diameter of the dwarf planet Eris by catching it as it passed in front of a faint star. This was seen by telescopes in Chile, including the TRAPPIST telescope ...
Oct 26, 2011 |
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Astronomers find extreme weather on an alien world
(PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has observed extreme brightness changes on a nearby brown dwarf that may indicate a storm grander than any seen yet on a planet. Because old ...
Sep 12, 2011 |
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Dwarf planet mysteries beckon to New Horizons
(PhysOrg.com) -- At this very moment one of the fastest spacecraft ever launched -- NASA's New Horizons -- is hurtling through the void at nearly one million miles per day. Launched in 2006, it has been in ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Sep 05, 2011 |
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Astronomers find ice and possibly methane on Snow White, a distant dwarf planet
Astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the dwarf planet 2007 OR10nicknamed Snow Whiteis an icy world, with about half its surface covered in water ...
Aug 22, 2011 |
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Do planets rob their stars of metals?
t has been known for several years that stars hosting planets are generally more rich in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, known in astronomy as metals. These heavy elements help to form ...
Aug 02, 2011 |
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Hubble discovers another moon around Pluto
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite, temporarily designated P4, was uncovered in a Hubble survey ...
Space & Earth / Space Exploration
Jul 20, 2011 |
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Astronomers find evidence for a strange new planetary system
(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of astronomers, including Dr Gavin Ramsay of the Armagh Observatory, has found evidence that suggests the existence of an extraordinary planetary system. Two giant planets appear to ...
Jun 21, 2011 |
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Dwarf planet Haumea shines with crystalline ice
The fifth dwarf planet of the Solar System, Haumea, and at least one of its two satellites, are covered in crystalline water-ice due to the tidal forces between them and the heat of radiogenic elements. This ...
May 12, 2011 |
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Transiting super-Earth detected around naked eye star
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 ...
May 02, 2011 |
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Super cold brown dwarf or is it a planet?
(PhysOrg.com) -- In a month that has already announced the discovery of a brown dwarf 75 light-years from Earth, NASAs infrared Spitzer Space Telescope has found what could prove to be an even cooler, ...