Although violent and unpredictable, stellar flares emitted by a planet's host star do not necessarily prevent life from forming, according to a new Northwestern University study.
Astronomy
Dec 21, 2020
19
768
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
7
24599
Earth is not necessarily the best planet in the universe. Researchers have identified two dozen planets outside our solar system that may have conditions more suitable for life than our own. Some of these orbit stars that ...
Astronomy
Oct 5, 2020
23
19776
CHEOPS keeps its promise: Observations with the space telescope have revealed details of the exoplanet WASP-189b—one of the most extreme planets known. CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, ...
Astronomy
Sep 28, 2020
1
1634
A planet observed crossing in front of, or transiting, a low-mass star has been determined to be about the size of Jupiter. While hundreds of Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered orbiting larger sun-like stars, it is ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2020
0
153
An upcoming NASA mission could find that there are more rogue planets—planets that float in space without orbiting a sun—than there are stars in the Milky Way, a new study theorizes.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2020
28
3653
The surviving core of a gas giant has been discovered orbiting a distant star by University of Warwick astronomers, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the interior of a planet.
Astronomy
Jul 1, 2020
9
1861
SRON-astronomers have found the signature for aluminum oxide (AlO) in the spectrum of exoplanet WASP-43b. This came as a surprise because AlO is expected to stay hidden in the lower atmospheric layers. It is only the second ...
Astronomy
Jul 1, 2020
2
4086
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
0
426
After examining a dozen types of suns and a roster of planet surfaces, Cornell University astronomers have developed a practical model—an environmental color "decoder"—to tease out climate clues for potentially habitable ...
Astronomy
May 18, 2020
1
206
