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NASA’s Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet
This artist’s rendition shows one possible appearance for the planet HD 219134b, the nearest confirmed rocky exoplanet found to date outside our solar system. The planet is 1.6 times the size of Earth,...
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Telescopes Team Up to Find Distant Uranus-Sized Planet Through Microlensing
Hubble Space Telescope NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawai have made independent confirmations of an exoplanet orbiting far from its central star. The planet was...
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Powerful Auroras Found at Brown Dwarf
This artist’s concept shows an auroral display on a brown dwarf. If you could see an aurora on a brown dwarf, it would be a million times brighter than an aurora on Earth. Credit: Chuck Carter and...
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The ghost of a dying star
Credit: ESO This extraordinary bubble, glowing like the ghost of a star in the haunting darkness of space, may appear supernatural and mysterious, but it is a familiar astronomical object: a planetary...
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Charting the slow death of the Universe
This composite picture shows how a typical galaxy appears at different wavelengths in the GAMA survey. This huge project has measured the energy output of more than 200,000 galaxies and represents the...
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Jupiter-like planet discovered outside our solar system
An artist’s conception of the Jupiter-like exoplanet 51 Eridani b, seen in the near-infrared light that shows the hot layers deep in its atmosphere glowing through clouds. Credit: Danielle Futselaar...
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Solar System formation don’t mean a thing without that spin
In this artist’s conception, gas and dust-the raw materials for making planets-swirl around a young star. The planets in our solar system formed from a similar disk of gas and dust captured by our sun....
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Scientists think “planetary pebbles” were the building blocks for the largest...
This artist’s concept of a young star system shows gas giants forming first, while the gas nebula is present. Southwest Research Institute scientists used computer simulations to nail down how Jupiter...
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Interstellar Seeds Could Create Oases of Life
In this theoretical artist’s conception of the Milky Way galaxy, transluscent green “bubbles” mark areas where life has spread beyond its home system to create cosmic oases, a process called...
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Distant planet’s interior chemistry may differ from our own
This is the crystal structure of magnesium peroxide, MgO2, courtesy of Sergey Lobanov, created using K. Momma’s program for drawing crystal structures. Credit: Sergey Lobanov As astronomers continue...
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SETI reborn: The New Search for Intelligent Life
The Robert C Byrd telescope at the Green Bank Radio Observatory, which is the ancestral home of SETI, will play a key role in the Breakthrough Listen project. Image: NRAO/AUI/NSF A new influx of money...
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Rocky planets may be habitable depending on their ‘air conditioning system’
Two out of three possible exoplanet climates (centre and right) are potentially habitable © KU Leuven – Ludmila Carone The quest for potentially habitable planets is often interpreted as the search for...
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Advanced Alien Civilizations Rare or Absent in the Local Universe
The figure (courtesy Danielle Futselaar, copyright ASTRON) shows what the activities of a Kardashev Type III civilization might look like — encapsulating the energy of stars by so called Dyson spheres...
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Stellar atmosphere can be used to predict the composition of rocky exoplanets
Artist’s impression, with a detail of exoplanet Corot-7b. The exoplanet Corot-7b is so close to its Sun-like host star that it must experience extreme conditions. This planet has a mass five times that...
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Watching an Exoplanet in Motion Around a Distant Star
A team of astronomers has given us our best view yet of an exoplanet moving in its orbit around a distant star. A series of images captured between November 2013 to April 2015 shows the exoplanet β Pic...
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Hubble Zooms in on Shrapnel from an Exploded Star
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula – expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago. Credits: NASA/ESA/Hubble...
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Earth-like planets around small stars likely have protective magnetic fields,...
Artist rendition of Earth’s magnetosphere. Credit: NASA Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface...
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Where to look for life? Astronomers devise ‘habitability index’ to guide...
The James Webb Space Telescope, a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror, is scheduled to be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in October of 2018 and will be the...
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Most Earth-Like Worlds Have Yet to Be Born, According to Theoretical Study
Astronomers are conducting extensive observations to estimate how many planets in our Milky Way galaxy might be potential abodes for life. Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI) Earth came early to...
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NASA’s K2 Finds Dead Star Vaporizing a Mini ‘Planet’
In this artist’s conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission....
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