Goldilocks moons
The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the habitable zones of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets ...
The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the habitable zones of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets ...
Astronomy
Jan 16, 2012
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Our galaxy may be teeming with rogue planets, gravitationally unbound to any star. An international team of scientists, led by Polish astronomers, has announced the discovery of the smallest Earth-sized free-floating planet ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2020
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Among the more than 4,000 known exoplanets, KOI-456.04 is something special: less than twice the size of Earth, it orbits a sun-like star. And it does so with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures ...
Astronomy
Jun 4, 2020
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426
Through a computer-simulated study, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden show that it is highly likely that the so-called Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This would make it the first exoplanet to be discovered inside our own ...
Astronomy
May 31, 2016
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1118
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, ...
Astronomy
Jan 16, 2015
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The Australian discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form.
Astronomy
May 1, 2015
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Fritz Benedict has used data he took over two decades ago with Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the existence of another planet around the Sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, and to pin down the planet's orbit and ...
Astronomy
Jun 2, 2020
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Gas giants orbiting our sun show a clear pattern; the more massive the planet, the lower the percentage of "heavy" elements (anything other than hydrogen and helium) in the planet's atmosphere. But out in the galaxy, the ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 27, 2023
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366
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has discovered two "super-Earth" exoplanets orbiting a nearby M-dwarf star known as TOI-2095. The newfound alien worlds have ...
(Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of a new giant extrasolar planet orbiting a subgiant star so closely that it should be destroyed due to tidal interactions. However, against all ...
An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet beyond our Solar System, orbiting a star other than our Sun. As of June 2009[update], 353 exoplanets are listed in the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia. The vast majority have been detected through radial velocity observations and other indirect methods rather than actual imaging. Most announced exoplanets are massive gas giant planets thought to resemble Jupiter, but this is a selection effect (bias) due to limitations in detection technology. Projections based on recent detections of much smaller worlds suggest that lightweight, rocky planets will eventually be found to outnumber extrasolar gas giants.
Extrasolar planets became a subject of scientific investigation in the mid-19th century. Many astronomers supposed that such planets existed, but they had no way of knowing how common they were or how similar they might be to the planets of our Solar System. The first confirmed radial velocity detection was made in 1995, revealing a gas giant planet in a four-day orbit around the nearby G-type star 51 Pegasi. The frequency of detections has tended to increase on an annual basis since then. It is estimated that at least 10% of sun-like stars have planets, and the true proportion may be much higher. The discovery of extrasolar planets sharpens the question of whether some might support extraterrestrial life.
Currently Gliese 581 d, the fourth planet of the red dwarf star Gliese 581 (approximately 20 light years from Earth), appears to be the best example yet discovered of a possible terrestrial exoplanet that orbits within the habitable zone surrounding its star. Although initial measurements suggested that Gliese 581 d resided outside the so-called "Goldilocks Zone", additional measurements place it firmly within.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA