NASA's planet-hunting Kepler telescope is broken, potentially jeopardizing the search for other worlds where life could exist outside our solar system.
May 15, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking ...
May 13, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets—planets that orbit stars beyond our sun—and more ...
May 09, 2013
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(Phys.org) —The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are ...
May 09, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Our galaxy is teeming with a wild variety of planets. In addition to our solar system's eight near-and-dear planets, there are more than 800 so-called exoplanets known to circle stars beyond ...
May 06, 2013
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An international team of astronomers, including Alexandre Santerne of the EXOEarths team at CAUP, identified and characterized two new exoplanets, thanks to combined observations from the Kepler space telescope, ...
Apr 30, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Two recent contests—one run by the SETI researchers that made the two most recent Pluto moon discoveries and another by an independent group called Uwingu to name an exoplanet—have caused ...
Apr 25, 2013
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Among the many planets detected orbiting other stars (exoplanets) over the last twenty years, a little less than three hundred periodically pass in front of their star. This is what astronomers call a planetary ...
Apr 25, 2013
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To Robert Green, light contains more than meets the eye: It contains fingerprints of materials that can be detected by sensors that capture the unique set of reflected wavelengths. Scientists have used the ...
Apr 22, 2013
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(Phys.org) —NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature ...
Apr 18, 2013
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(Phys.org) —The installation of equipment into the James Webb Space Telescope requires patience and precision. To prepare for the installation of the actual flight equipment and ensure perfection in the ...
Apr 16, 2013
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In the light of recent events, where the possibility of buying the rights to name exoplanets has been advertised, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) wishes to inform the public that such schemes have ...
Apr 13, 2013
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The solar system's configuration is learned in grade school, and forever committed to memory with the help of foam balls, deconstructed coat hangers, and paint. It's a fairly straightforward arrangement: ...
Mar 21, 2013
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It's time to "get real" about naming exoplanets, says Uwingu CEO and scientist Dr. Alan Stern. And so the latest project from the space funding startup company is a contest to name the nearest exoplanet, ...
Mar 20, 2013
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A team of astronomers, including Quinn Konopacky of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto, has made the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like ...
Mar 14, 2013
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