Eighteen-hour-year planet on edge of destruction

Astronomers from the University of Warwick have observed an exoplanet orbiting a star in just over 18 hours, the shortest orbital period ever observed for a planet of its type.

How large can a planet be?

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. In terms of mass, Jupiter dwarfs the other planets. If you were to gather all the other planets together into a single mass, Jupiter would still be 2.5 times more massive. ...

Young giant planet offers clues to formation of exotic worlds

For most of human history our understanding of how planets form and evolve was based on the eight (or nine) planets in our solar system. But over the last 25 years, the discovery of more than 4,000 exoplanets, or planets ...

Turning Planetary Theory Upside Down (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- The discovery of nine new transiting exoplanets is announced today at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting. When these new results were combined with earlier observations of transiting exoplanets astronomers ...

Very Large Telescope Interferometer detects exozodiacal light

By using the full power of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer an international team of astronomers has discovered exozodiacal light close to the habitable zones around nine nearby stars. This light is starlight reflected ...

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