Apr 16, 2018
in
Goodbye Kepler, hello TESS—passing the baton in the search for distant planets
For centuries, human beings have wondered about the possibility of other Earths orbiting distant stars. Perhaps some of these alien worlds would harbor strange forms of life or have unique and telling histories or futures. ...
Iron-rich stars host shorter-period planets
Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have learned that the chemical composition of a star can exert unexpected influence on its planetary system—a discovery made possible by an ongoing SDSS survey of stars ...
Planets around other stars are like peas in a pod
An international research team led by Université de Montréal astrophysicist Lauren Weiss has discovered that exoplanets orbiting the same star tend to have similar sizes and a regular orbital spacing. This pattern, revealed ...
Orbital mayhem around a red dwarf
In the collective imagination, planets of a solar system all circle in the equatorial plane of their star. The star also spins, and its spin axis is aligned with the spin axes of the planetary orbits, giving the impression ...
Dusty protoplanetary disks
Planetary systems form out of disks of gas and dust around young stars. How the formation proceeds, however, is complex and poorly understood. Many physical processes are involved including accretion onto the star, photoevaporation ...
We've found an exo-planet with an extraordinarily eccentric orbit
The discovery of a planet with a highly elliptical orbit around an ancient star could help us understand more about how planetary systems form and evolve over time.
How scientists discovered our first interstellar mystery visitor
The astronomy world has been abuzz recently with the discovery of a new object cutting through our solar system. Its path indicates it came from interstellar space—the first body of its kind ever observed.
A fleeting visit—an asteroid from another planetary system just shot past Earth
The discovery of an unusual small object in the solar system last month caught the imagination of the global astronomical community. Scientists around the world were asking "what is it?" and "where did it come from?"
