Related topics: stars · planets

The ongoing search for habitable exoplanets

A balmy Florida evening, and my family and I stood on Cocoa Beach, looking northward toward the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. We were part of a seaside crowd gathered to witness the launch of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. ...

Mid-mass black hole hurls star across the Milky Way

An international team of astronomers has pinpointed the origin of a runaway high-velocity star named PG 1610+062 and determined that it was likely ejected from its birth cluster with the help of a mid-mass black hole (MMBH).

Newly discovered giant planet slingshots around its star

Astronomers have discovered a planet three times the mass of Jupiter that travels on a long, egg-shaped path around its star. If this planet were somehow placed into our own solar system, it would swing from within our asteroid ...

Three new Beta Cephei stars detected

Using NASA's prolonged Kepler mission, known as K2, astronomers have identified three new Beta Cephei stars. The newly found trio is an important addition to the still short list of known stars of this type. The finding is ...

The low density of some exoplanets is confirmed

The Kepler mission and its extension, called K2, discovered thousands of exoplanets. It detected them using the transit technique, measuring the dip in light intensity whenever an orbiting planet moved across the face of ...

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