HARPS-N instrument will help confirm Kepler's planet finds

(PhysOrg.com) -- The search for planets outside our solar system continues to heat up. NASA's Kepler spacecraft has located more than 1,200 planetary candidates, however confirming them remains a challenge. In some circumstances, ...

Scientists find potentially habitable planet near Earth

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of planet hunters led by astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of an Earth-sized planet (three times the mass ...

Asteroid found in gravitational 'dead zone'

There are places in space where the gravitational tug between a planet and the Sun balance out, allowing other smaller bodies to remain stable. These places are called Lagrangian points. So-called Trojan asteroids have been ...

Cassini Double Play: Enceladus and Titan

(PhysOrg.com) -- About a month and a half after its last double flyby, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be turning another double play this week, visiting the geyser moon Enceladus and the hazy moon Titan. The alignment of ...

How to hunt for exoplanets

A new report launched by the Institute of Physics (IOP) Exoplanets - The search for planets beyond our solar system explains how new technological advances have seen the discovery of more than 400 exoplanets to date, a number ...

Massive planet is being torn apart by its own tides

(PhysOrg.com) -- An international group of astrophysicists has determined that a massive planet outside our Solar System is being distorted and destroyed by its host star--a finding that helps explain the unexpectedly large ...

First Solid Evidence for a Rocky Exoplanet (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The longest set of HARPS measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b, revealing its mass as five times that of Earth's. Combined ...

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