Tagged: exoplanets

Using data for more than 500 young stars observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), scientists have uncovered a direct link between protoplanetary disk structures—the planet-forming disks that surround stars—and planet demographics. The survey proves that higher mass stars are more likely to be...

Finding other Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy has been a holy grail of exoplanet research. Astronomers have found Earth-sized exoplanets. But is an Earth-sized planet going to be Earth-like? We still don’t know. Now, though, scientists at the University of Warwick in the...

This comic-book-style illustration by Swiss graphic novelist Frederik Peeters shows a closeup view of the evening border of the exoplanet WASP-76b. The ultra-hot giant exoplanet has a day side where temperatures climb above 2,400 degrees Celsius (4,000 degrees F), high enough to vaporize metals. Strong...

An international collaboration of astronomers led by a researcher from the Astrobiology Center and Queen’s University Belfast has detected a new chemical signature in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet—i.e., a planet that orbits a star other than our sun. The hydroxyl radical (OH) was...

The smallest exoplanet yet found to contain water is about the size of Neptune — and a rare glimpse at its atmosphere reveals clear conditions. The smallest exoplanet yet found to contain water is about the size of Neptune — and a rare glimpse at...

Spectroscopic observations of a distant planet swooping across the face of its sun have given astronomers a first-ever look at the atmosphere of an Earth-like planet lying beyond our Solar System. The new data don’t provide a precise list of gaseous constituents, but they do...

They may be the youngest astronomers to make a discovery yet. This week, 16-year-old Kartik Pinglé and 18-year-old Jasmine Wright have co-authored a peer-reviewed paper in The Astronomical Journal describing the discovery of four new exoplanets about 200-light-years away from Earth. The high schoolers participated...

Using a combination of telescopes, including the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have revealed a system consisting of six exoplanets, five of which are locked in a rare rhythm around their central star. The researchers believe the system could...

The weathering of silicate rocks plays an important role to keep the climate on Earth clement. Scientists led by the University of Bern and the Swiss national center of competence in research (NCCR) PlanetS, investigated the general principles of this process. Their results could influence...

Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same size as Earth orbiting in the “habitable zone” – the distance from a star...