Three planets in habitable zone of nearby star (w/ video)

(Phys.org) —A team of astronomers has combined new observations of Gliese 667C with existing data from HARPS at ESO's 3.6-metre telescope in Chile, to reveal a system with at least six planets. A record-breaking three of ...

Avatar's moon Pandora could be real

In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable - and inhabited - alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA's Kepler ...

Will Kepler find habitable moons?

(PhysOrg.com) -- Since the launch of the NASA Kepler Mission earlier this year, astronomers have been keenly awaiting the first detection of an Earth-like planet around another star. Now, in an echo of science fiction movies ...

A new way to characterize habitable planets

For decades, science fiction authors have imagined scenarios in which life thrives on the harsh surfaces of Mars or our moon, or in the oceans below the icy surfaces of Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa. But ...

These are the best places to search for habitable exomoons

Our solar system contains eight planets and more than 200 moons. The large majority of those moons have no chance of being habitable, but some of them—Europa and Enceladus, for example—are strong candidates in the search ...

Study suggests bright patches on Titan are dry lake beds

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and one in France has found evidence that suggests the bright patches spotted on Titan's surface 20 years ago are dry lake beds. In their paper published ...

Exomoons may be home to extra-terrestrial life

Moons orbiting planets outside our solar system could offer another clue about the pool of worlds that may be home to extra-terrestrial life, according to an astrophysicist at the University of Lincoln.

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