Short-lived light sources discovered in the sky

A project lead by an international team of researchers use publicly available data with images of the sky dating as far back as the 1950s to try to detect and analyse objects that have disappeared over time. In the project ...

Gas giant composition not determined by host star

A surprising analysis of the composition of gas giant exoplanets and their host stars shows that there isn't a strong correlation between their compositions when it comes to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, according ...

Researchers identify a minimoon fireball

A team of researchers at Curtin University studying data from Australia's Desert Fireball Network has identified a minimoon fireball. In their paper published in The Astronomical Journal, the group describes how they found ...

Jupiter-sized exoplanet discovered through microlensing

The path of a light beam is bent by the presence of mass, and a massive body can therefore act like a lens (a "gravitational lens") to distort the image of an object seen behind it. Scientists first confirmed Einstein's prediction ...

Worldwide observations confirm nearby 'lensing' exoplanet

Researchers using telescopes around the world confirmed and characterized an exoplanet orbiting a nearby star through a rare phenomenon known as gravitational microlensing. The exoplanet has a mass similar to Neptune, but ...

Why a rocky planet with three suns has astronomers' attention

Planets that are even a little like Earth are hard to find. That's why when astronomers like Jennifer G. Winters come across a body that may be solid, rocky, and possibly have its own atmosphere, they get excited. And especially ...

Looking for lurkers —a new way to do SETI

The most recently discovered group of rocky bodies nearby Earth are termed co-orbital objects. These may have been an attractive location for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) to locate a probe to observe Earth throughout ...

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