In the search for life on distant planets, scientists generally focus on identifying Earth-sized, rocky planets, finding planets in their host star's habitable zone, and having available the telescope power to read the chemical make-up of the atmospheres. A relatively small number of Earth-sized exoplanets discovered by telescopes in space and on Earth have meet …
Continue reading "The JWST Discovers its First Earth-Sized Exoplanet"
Red dwarf suns are the most common in the universe, and many of the exoplanets officially discovered so far orbit this type of "cool" star. Red dwarfs are much smaller and less powerful than the G type stars such as our own sun, and it is easier to detect exoplanets orbiting them because of their …
Different methods of searching for and finding distant exoplanets give different information about the planets found. The transit method -- where an exoplanets passed in front of its sun and dims the bright sunlight ever so slightly -- gives astronomers not only a detection but also its radius or size. The radial velocity method -- …
Continue reading "A Close Exoplanet Found That May Have An Atmosphere Ideal For Study"
The more we learn about the billions upon billions of planets that orbit beyond our solar system, the more we are surprised by the wild menagerie of objects out there. From the start, many of these untolled planets have been startling, paradigm-breaking, mysterious, hellish, potentially habitable and just plain weird. Despite the confirmed detection of …
https://videopress.com/v/U2bToIWU?preloadContent=metadata Artist animation of WD 1856 b orbiting the white dwarf. Due to the tiny size of the white dwarf and close orbit of the planet, the animation is to scale. The slightly inclined orbit means that the planet does not entirely block the white dwarf's light as it transits (Tasker). It has been an …
When the the first Star Wars movie came out in 1977, it featured the now-iconic two-sun, "circumbinary" planet Tatooine. At that time astronomers didn't really know if such solar systems existed, with more than one sun and at least one planet. Indeed, the first extra-solar planet wasn't detected until the early 1990s. And the first …
Candidate exoplanets as seen by TESS in a southern sky mosaic from 13 observing sectors. (NASA/MIT/TESS) NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has finished its one year full-sky observation of Southern sky and has found hundreds of candidate exoplanets and 29 confirmed planets. It is now maneuvering its array of wide-field telescopes and cameras to …
The newest space telescope in the sky -- NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS -- has been searching for exoplanets for less than a year, but already it has quite a collection to its name. The TESS mission is to find relatively nearby planets orbiting bright and stable suns, and so expectations were high from …
Continue reading "Exoplanets Discoveries Flood in From TESS"
With so many exoplanets already detected, with the pace of discovery continuing to be so fast, and with efforts to find more distant worlds so constant and global, it's easy to become somewhat blase´ about new discoveries. After so many "firsts," and so many different kinds of planets found in very different ways, it certainly …
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket transporting the TESS satellite lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, April 18, 2018. The space telescope will survey almost the entire sky, staring at the brightest, closest stars in an effort to find any planets that might be …
Many Worlds 