In humanity's search for life outside our Solar System, one of the best places scientists have considered is Alpha Centauri, a system containing the three nearest stars beyond our Sun.
Astronomy
Jun 7, 2018
0
59
SPIRou, the new planet-hunting spectropolarimeter developed for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), has successfully recorded its first starlight. Ten years after it was first designed and following four intensive ...
Astronomy
May 29, 2018
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19
One year ago, I wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, a system of seven temperate terrestrial planets orbiting an ultra-cool red dwarf star. This was an enormous astronomical ...
Astronomy
Apr 25, 2018
1
48
Since its discovery was announced in August of 2016, Proxima b has been an endless source of wonder and the target of many scientific studies. In addition to being the closest extra-solar planet to our Solar System, this ...
Astronomy
Apr 12, 2018
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88
Look up at the sky tonight. Every star you see—plus hundreds of thousands, even millions more—will come under the intense stare of NASA's newest planet hunter.
Space Exploration
Apr 12, 2018
0
182
Intense radiation could strip away the ozone layer of Earth-like planets around other stars and render them uninhabitable, according to a new study led by Dr. Eike Guenther of the Thueringer Observatory in Germany.
Astronomy
Apr 3, 2018
3
182
A research team led by Teruyuki Hirano of Tokyo Institute of Technology's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences has validated 15 exoplanets orbiting red dwarf systems. One of the brightest red dwarfs, K2-155 that is ...
Astronomy
Mar 12, 2018
2
1506
New research in to how Earth's atmosphere evolved over time could hold the key to detecting life on exoplanets, according to scientists from the University of St Andrews and Cornell University.
Astronomy
Feb 19, 2018
1
463
One of the defining moments in planetary astronomy in 2017 is that this is the year we discovered the first astronomical object to enter the Solar System from interstellar space. Now known as `Oumuamua (Hawaiian for "scout"), ...
Space Exploration
Feb 5, 2018
4
43
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to peer deep into the vast stellar nursery called the Orion Nebula, astronomers searched for small, faint bodies. What they found was the largest population yet of brown dwarfs—objects ...
Astronomy
Jan 11, 2018
0
47
