Eighteen Earth-sized exoplanets discovered

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS), the Georg August University of Göttingen, and the Sonneberg Observatory have discovered 18 Earth-sized planets beyond the solar system. The worlds are ...

Planet-hunter CubeSat images Los Angeles

A small satellite designed to hunt for new planets beyond the solar system recently looked down at Earth to capture an image of California's "City of Stars."

Young planets orbiting red dwarfs may lack ingredients for life

Rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars may be bone dry and lifeless, according to a new study using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Water and organic compounds, essential for life as we know it, may get blown away before they ...

New instrument joins the hunt for Earth-like planets

A ground-breaking $3.8 million instrument, used by astronomers to discover and study Earth-like planets, has been launched by a team from UNSW Sydney, The Australian National University (ANU) and Australian Astronomical Optics ...

A new classification scheme for exoplanet sizes

There are about 4433 exoplanets in the latest catalogs. Their radii have generally been measured by knowing the radius of their host star and then closely fitting the lightcurves as the planet transits across the face of ...

You, too, can be an astrophysicist with your new telescope

A telescope can reveal the beauty of the universe, such as the Moon's craters, Saturn's rings, and the glowing gas of the Orion nebula. But a telescope isn't just for sightseeing – it is also a scientific instrument.

Dwarf planet Makemake reveals its secrets for the first time

Astronomers have used three telescopes at ESO's observatories in Chile to observe the dwarf planet Makemake as it drifted in front of a distant star and blocked its light. The new observations have allowed them to check for ...

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