Astronomers using data collected with the Lowell Discovery Telescope (LDT) have helped to characterize only the second known minimoon of Earth, a newly discovered asteroid with the designation 2020 CD3, or CD3 for short. ...
Astronomy
Nov 23, 2020
2
155
A new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope gives new insight into an important question: how habitable are planets that orbit the most common type of stars in the Galaxy? The target ...
Astronomy
Oct 30, 2020
4
436
Thanks to new research using data from the Kepler space telescope, it's estimated that there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable planets in our galaxy. Some could even be pretty close, with several likely ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2020
11
5118
Young stars—just like young humans—are prone to temper flares. But star flares can incinerate everything around them, including the atmospheres of nearby planets starting to form.
Astronomy
Oct 26, 2020
0
83
TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, was launched in 2018 with the goal of discovering small planets around the Sun's nearest neighbors, stars bright enough to allow for follow-up characterizations of their planets' ...
Astronomy
Oct 26, 2020
2
695
A study of comet motions indicates that the solar system has a second alignment plane. Analytical investigation of the orbits of long-period comets shows that the aphelia of the comets, the point where they are farthest from ...
Astronomy
Sep 29, 2020
6
12122
In a delightful alignment of astronomy and mathematics, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a "pi Earth"—an Earth-sized planet that zips around its star every 3.14 days, in an orbit reminiscent of the universal ...
Astronomy
Sep 21, 2020
7
9976
A planet observed crossing in front of, or transiting, a low-mass star has been determined to be about the size of Jupiter. While hundreds of Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered orbiting larger sun-like stars, it is ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2020
0
153
For several years, astronomers and cosmologists have theorized about the existence of an additional planet with a mass 10 times greater than that of Earth, situated in the outermost regions of the solar system. This hypothetical ...
An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planets—planets that float in space without orbiting a sun—than there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2020
28
3653
