There are more than 3,900 confirmed planets beyond our solar system. Most of them have been detected because of their "transits"—instances when a planet crosses its star, momentarily blocking its light. These dips in starlight ...
Astronomy
Jan 4, 2019
2
477
Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and his colleagues—Northern Arizona University's Chad Trujillo, and the University of Hawaii's David Tholen—are once again redefining our Solar System's edge. They discovered a new extremely ...
Astronomy
Oct 2, 2018
9
2299
For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers' attention. ...
Astronomy
Jul 18, 2018
1
209
A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides new clues indicating that an exoplanet 500 light-years away is much like Earth.
Astronomy
Jun 28, 2018
16
734
Aspects of an otherwise Earthlike planet's tilt and orbital dynamics can severely affect its potential habitability—even triggering abrupt "snowball states" where oceans freeze and surface life is impossible, according ...
Astronomy
May 15, 2018
1
198
Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a vast, complex dust structure, about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A. A bright, narrow, inner ring of dust is already known to encircle ...
Astronomy
Mar 6, 2018
0
418
Over 3500 extra-solar planets have been confirmed to date. Most of them were discovered using the transit method, and astronomers can combine the transit light curves with velocity wobble observations to determine the planet's ...
Astronomy
Mar 2, 2018
0
658
Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm - once big enough to stretch across the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Portugal - is shrinking out of existence as seen ...
Space Exploration
Feb 15, 2018
7
211
A team of U.S. astronomers studying the star RZ Piscium has found evidence suggesting its strange, unpredictable dimming episodes may be caused by vast orbiting clouds of gas and dust, the remains of one or more destroyed ...
Astronomy
Dec 21, 2017
3
441
The discovery of an eighth planet circling the distant star Kepler-90 by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Andrew Vanderburg and Google's Christopher Shallue overturns our solar system's status as having the highest ...
Astronomy
Dec 14, 2017
14
2125
