During a scheduled contact with NASA's Kepler space telescope on Thursday, July 28, the team found the photometer—the camera onboard the spacecraft—powered off. The photometer was turned on again and the flight system ...
Space Exploration
Aug 8, 2016
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26
Using public data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, astronomers have catalogued the planet candidates that may be similar to our third rock from the sun. The tabulation of candidates will help astronomers focus their research ...
Astronomy
Aug 5, 2016
1
24
NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets – the single largest finding of planets to date.
Astronomy
May 10, 2016
10
3048
Scientists are getting closer to finding worlds that resemble our own "blue marble" of a planet. NASA's Kepler mission alone has confirmed more than 1,000 planets outside our solar system—a handful of which are a bit bigger ...
Astronomy
Apr 29, 2016
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226
Is there life on other planets, somewhere in this enormous universe? That's probably the most compelling question we can ask. A lot of space science and space missions are pointed directly at that question.
Astronomy
Apr 27, 2016
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11
Our solar system sure seems like an orderly place. The orbits of the planets are predictable enough that we can send spacecraft on multi-year journeys to them and they will reliably reach their destinations. But we've only ...
Astronomy
Apr 22, 2016
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36
What would it take to hide an entire planet? It sounds more like a question posed in an episode of "Star Trek" than in academic discourse, but sometimes the bleeding edge of science blurs with themes found in science fiction.
Astronomy
Apr 14, 2016
1
28
A massive rogue planet has been discovered in the Beta Pictoris moving group. The planet, called PSO J318.5338-22.8603 (Sorry, I didn't name it), is over eight times as massive as Jupiter. Because it's one of the few directly-imaged ...
Astronomy
Feb 12, 2016
0
69
We thought we understood how big rocky planets can get. But most of our understanding of planetary formation and solar system development has come from direct observation of our own solar system. We simply couldn't see any ...
Astronomy
Feb 11, 2016
0
53
Astronomers at the 29th International Astronomical Union General Assembly will announce on August 14 the discovery of a new transiting "circumbinary" planet, bringing the number of such known planets into double digits. A ...
Astronomy
Aug 7, 2015
2
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