Astronomers discover a rare stellar disk of quartz dust

A research team of Japanese astronomers led by Dr. Hideaki Fujiwara (Subaru Telescope) has discovered a main-sequence star that is surrounded by a rare disk of quartz dust. Collisions of planetesimals, building blocks for ...

How common are earth-moon planetary systems?

Sebastian Elser, Prof. Ben Moore and Dr. Joachim Stadel of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in cooperation with Ryuji Morishima of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, tried to estimate how common Earth-Moon planetary ...

Building a new planet

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers over the past decade have made remarkable progress in the study of extrasolar planets; over 500 distant worlds are now confirmed. Meanwhile, as this active research community continues to discover ...

A New Way to Find Earths

Astronomers have used a completely new technique to find an exotic extrasolar planet. The same approach might even be sensitive enough to find planets as small as the Earth in orbit around distant stars.

Astronomers discover 'tilted planets'

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Exeter, UK, research has added to a growing evidence that several giant planets have orbits so tilted that their orbits can be perpendicular or even backwards relative to their parent star’s ...

Discovery of a Retrograde or Highly Tilted Extrasolar Planet

Astronomers have found that the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b has a retrograde or highly tilted orbit. Studying such planets is important in understanding the diversity of planetary systems and assessing current models of how ...

Construction of Europe's exoplanet hunter PLATO begins

The construction of ESA's PLATO mission to find and study planets beyond our solar system will be led by Germany's OHB System AG as prime contractor, marking the start of the full industrial phase of the project.

page 2 from 3