The four planets of the Kepler-223 star system seem to have little in common with the planets of Earth's own solar system. And yet a new study shows that the Kepler-223 system is trapped in an orbital configuration that Jupiter, ...
Astronomy
May 11, 2016
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1978
As astronomers continue to find more and more planets around stars beyond our own Sun, they are trying to discover patterns and features that indicate what types of planets are likely to form around different kinds of stars. ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2015
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29
It's like something out of an interplanetary chess game. Astrophysicists at the University of Toronto have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about four billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection ...
Astronomy
Oct 29, 2015
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Neptune is the eight planet from our Sun, one of the four gas giants, and one of the four outer planets in our Solar System. Since the "demotion" of Pluto by the IAU to the status of a dwarf planet – and/or Plutoid and ...
Space Exploration
Sep 14, 2015
0
53
It seems as if the planets are fleeing the evening sky, just as the Fall school star party season is getting underway. Venus and Mars have entered the morning sky, and Jupiter reaches solar conjunction this week. Even glorious ...
Astronomy
Aug 28, 2015
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70
Our solar system's shadowy ninth (dwarf) planet was the subject of furious speculation and a frantic search for almost a century before it was finally discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. And remarkably, Pluto's reality ...
Astronomy
Jul 17, 2015
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31
The new pictures that NASA's New Horizons probe has begun to beam back have revealed Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, in ever greater detail from what is the first ever spacecraft fly-by.
Space Exploration
Jul 6, 2015
0
76
They wouldn't float like balloons or give you the chance to talk in high, squeaky voices, but planets with helium skies may constitute an exotic planetary class in our Milky Way galaxy. Researchers using data from NASA's ...
Astronomy
Jun 11, 2015
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As the New Horizons spacecraft gathers information about Pluto before and after its July 2015 close encounter, practically every day we're learning more about this dwarf planet.
Space Exploration
Feb 18, 2015
0
29
Exoplanet surveys have discovered the first planets with sizes between 2 and 3.5 Earth radii—slightly smaller than the size of the planet Neptune in our solar system. These planets, dubbed "mini-Neptunes," have been spotted ...
Astronomy
Jan 19, 2015
0
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