NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, ...
Astronomy
Jan 16, 2015
16
3087
(Phys.org) —Some Sun-like stars are 'Earth-eaters.' During their development they ingest large amounts of the rocky material from which 'terrestrial' planets like Earth, Mars and Venus are made.
Astronomy
May 20, 2014
3
0
UC Berkeley and University of Hawaii astronomers analyzed all four years of Kepler data in search of Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of sun-like stars, and then rigorously tested how many planets they may have missed. ...
Astronomy
Nov 4, 2013
32
0
Researchers searching the galaxy for planets that could pass the litmus test of sustaining water-based life must find whether those planets fall in a habitable zone, where they could be capable of having liquid water and ...
Astronomy
Jan 30, 2013
15
0
(Phys.org)—A joint effort of citizen scientists and professional astronomers has led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting twin suns that in turn is orbited by a second distant pair of stars.
Astronomy
Oct 15, 2012
12
0
(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.
Astronomy
Oct 6, 2011
13
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- In the last few years astronomers have observed that in some extrasolar systems the star is spinning one way and the planet, a "hot Jupiter," is orbiting the star in the opposite direction. A Northwestern ...
Astronomy
May 11, 2011
23
0
(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 ...
Astronomy
Oct 15, 2010
2
0
(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 ...
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2010
1
0
Hundreds of extrasolar planets have been found over the past decade and a half, most of them solitary worlds orbiting their parent star in seeming isolation. With further observation, however, one in three of these systems ...
Astronomy
Jul 29, 2010
2
0
