EXTRA SOLAR

2,688 articles

Giant telescope tackles orbit and size of exoplanet
May 16, 2014 (SPX)
Using one of the world's largest telescopes, a Lawrence Livermore team and international collaborators have tracked the orbit of a planet at least four times th...
Odd planet, so far from its star
May 15, 2014 (SPX)
A gas giant has been added to the short list of exoplanets discovered through direct imaging. It is located around GU Psc, a star three times less massive than ...
New Exomoon Hunting Technique Could Find Solar System-like Moons
May 14, 2014 (SPX)
Among the most sought-after prizes in astronomy these days are "exomoons," or moons orbiting exoplanets. Although astronomers have detected more than a thousand...
Length of Exoplanet Day Measured for First Time
May 02, 2014 (SPX)
Observations from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to hav...
Spitzer and WISE Telescopes Find Close, Cold Neighbor of Sun
May 01, 2014 (JPL)
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered what appears to be the coldest "brown dwarf" known -- a dim, star-...
Seven Samples from the Solar System's Birth
Apr 29, 2014 (SPX)
by Aaron L. Gronstal for Astrobiology Magazine At this year's Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC), scientists reported that, after eight painstaking y...
Astronomical Forensics Uncover Planetary Disks in NASA's Hubble Archive
Apr 29, 2014 (SPX)
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have applied a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks obser...
An Earth-sized planet that might hold liquid water
Apr 27, 2014 (SPX)
In a dim and faraway solar system, astronomers have for the first time discovered a rocky, Earth-sized planet that might hold liquid water-a necessary ingredien...
Solved: Mysteries of a Nearby Planetary System's Dynamics
Apr 27, 2014 (SPX)
Mysteries of one of the most fascinating nearby planetary systems now have been solved, report authors of a scientific paper to be published by the journal Mont...
Astronomers discover Earth-sized planet in habitable zone
Apr 25, 2014 (SPX)
University of Notre Dame astrophysicist Justin R. Crepp and researchers from NASA working with the Kepler space mission have detected an Earth-like planet orbit...
Upside-down planet reveals new method for studying binary star systems
Apr 23, 2014 (SPX)
What looked at first like a sort of upside-down planet has instead revealed a new method for studying binary star systems, discovered by a University of Washing...
Exoplanets Soon to Gleam in the Eye of NESSI
Apr 23, 2014 (JPL)
The New Mexico Exoplanet Spectroscopic Survey Instrument (NESSI) will soon get its first "taste" of exoplanets, helping astronomers decipher their chemical comp...
First Potentially Habitable Earth-Sized Planet Confirmed By Gemini And Keck Observatories
Apr 23, 2014 (SPX)
The first Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of another star has been confirmed by observations with both the W. M. Keck Observatory and t...
Odd Tilts Could Make More Worlds Habitable
Apr 19, 2014 (SPX)
Pivoting planets that lean one way and then change orientation within a short geological time period might be surprisingly habitable, according to new modeling ...
First Earth-sized planet found in 'habitable zone': NASA
Apr 17, 2014 (AFP)
The hunt for potential life in outer space has taken a step forward -- an international team of researchers has discovered the first Earth-sized planet within t...
Continents May Be A Key Feature of Super-Earths
Apr 16, 2014 (SPX)
Huge Earth-like planets that have both continents and oceans may be better at harboring extraterrestrial life than those that are water-only worlds. A new study...
Chance meeting creates celestial diamond ring
Apr 13, 2014 (SPX)
Most stars with masses similar to that of our Sun will end their lives as white dwarfs - small, very dense, and hot bodies that slowly cool down over billions o...
Faraway Moon or Faint Star? Possible Exomoon Found
Apr 11, 2014 (JPL)
Titan, Europa, Io and Phobos are just a few members of our solar system's pantheon of moons. Are there are other moons out there, orbiting planets beyond our su...
The Importance of Planetary Plumes
Apr 08, 2014 (SPX)
The Hubble Space Telescope is famous for finding black holes. It can pick out thousands of galaxies in a patch of sky the size of a thumbprint. The most powerfu...
Orbital physics is child's play with 'Super Planet Crash'
Apr 08, 2014 (SPX)
Super Planet Crash is a pretty simple game: players build their own planetary system, putting planets into orbit around a star and racking up points until they ...
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