The recently discovered planet TOI-674 b, a bit bigger than Neptune and orbiting a red-dwarf star about 150 light-years away, is a member of an exclusive club: Exoplanets, or planets around other stars, known to have water ...
Astronomy
Jan 14, 2022
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166
Exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, are found at distances very far from Earth. For example, the closest exoplanet to us, Proxima Centauri b, is 4.2 light years away, or 265,000 times the distance between ...
Astronomy
Jan 7, 2022
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Ultra-hot Jupiters—named as such because of their physical similarities to the planet Jupiter—are exoplanets that orbit stars other than the sun with temperatures so high that the molecules in their atmospheres are completely ...
Space Exploration
Nov 10, 2021
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21
A new study shows how the chemicals in an exoplanet's atmosphere can, in some cases, reveal whether or not the temperature on its surface is too hot for liquid water.
Astronomy
Oct 27, 2021
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228
An international team of scientists, using the ground-based Gemini Observatory telescope in Chile, is the first to directly measure the amount of both water and carbon monoxide in the atmosphere of a planet in another solar ...
Space Exploration
Oct 27, 2021
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1301
Most stars including the sun generate magnetic activity that drives a fast-moving, ionized wind and also produces X-ray and ultraviolet emission (often referred to as XUV radiation). XUV radiation from a star can be absorbed ...
Astronomy
Oct 4, 2021
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191
Many exoplanets have opaque atmospheres, obscured by clouds or hazes that make it hard for astronomers to characterize their chemical compositions. A new study shows that haze particles produced under different conditions ...
Astronomy
Jul 12, 2021
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Life thrives at stable temperatures. On Earth, this is facilitated by the carbon cycle. Scientists at SRON, VU and RUG have now developed a model that predicts whether there is a carbon cycle present on exoplanets, provided ...
Astrobiology
May 3, 2021
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151
In the quest for habitable planets beyond our own, NASA is studying a mission concept called Pandora, which could eventually help decode the atmospheric mysteries of distant worlds in our galaxy. One of four low-cost astrophysics ...
Astronomy
Mar 24, 2021
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71
Upcoming telescopes will give us more power to search for biosignatures on all the exoplanets we've found. Much of the biosignature conversation is centered on biogenic chemistry, such as atmospheric gases produced by simple, ...
Astrobiology
Feb 19, 2021
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