Tagged: exoplanet

We can’t detect them yet, but radio signals from distant solar systems could provide valuable information about the characteristics of their planets. A paper by Rice University scientists describes a way to better determine which exoplanets are most likely to produce detectable signals based on...

An international team of astronomers have become the first in the world to detect isotopes in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. It concerns different forms of carbon in the gaseous giant planet TYC 8998-760-1 b at a distance of 300 light years in the constellation...

Many exoplanets have opaque atmospheres, obscured by clouds or hazes that make it hard for astronomers to characterize their chemical compositions. A new study shows that haze particles produced under different conditions have a wide range of properties that can determine how clear or hazy...

Planets are born in massive swirling disks of gas and dust around newly formed stars. Astronomers have observed many of these protoplanetary disks, and often they can see concentric gaps in the disks, like grooves on an old vinyl phonograph record. It’s in those gaps...

For the first time, scientists have found evidence of global tectonic activity – the movement of plates of a planet’s crust that happens due to heat inside the planet – on a world beyond our solar system. The new study, published February 24, 2021, in...

A few decades ago, astronomers thought planets orbited other stars, but they hadn’t really seen any. Now, we know thousands of distant planets – known as exoplanets – of the billions thought to exist in our Milky Way galaxy. Most exoplanet discoveries have come from...

An international team of astronomers analyzed the light of an exoplanet labeled HD 209458b – also known as Osiris – and found as many as six molecules in its atmosphere. It’s the most molecules ever detected in a planetary atmosphere outside of our solar system,...

One of the unspoken caveats of most exoplanet discovery missions is that they only operate for a few years. Such a short observing window means there are planets with longer orbital periods, usually further out from the star, that those surveys would completely miss. Knowing...

Direct image of the giant exoplanet YSES 2b (marked as “b”). The star in the middle of the bright dots has been hidden to block its light. Astronomers have discovered many giant planets, similar to Jupiter or Saturn, orbiting other stars. Some of these –...

Life thrives at stable temperatures. On Earth, this is facilitated by the carbon cycle. Scientists at SRON, VU and RUG have now developed a model that predicts whether there is a carbon cycle present on exoplanets, provided the mass, core size and amount of CO2...