Category: Exoplanets
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JWST is Powerful Enough to See a Variety of Biosignatures in Exoplanets
The best hope for finding life on another world isn’t listening for coded messages or traveling to distant stars, it’s detecting the chemical signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres. This long hoped-for achievement is often thought to be beyond our current observatories, but a new study argues that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could…
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Astronomers make first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around an exoplanet
“Our work presents a clear detection of a disc in which satellites could be forming,” says Myriam Benisty, a researcher at the University of Grenoble, France, and at the University of Chile, who led the new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. “Our ALMA observations were obtained at such exquisite resolution that we could clearly identify that…
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Astronomers uncover evidence that there could be many more Earth-sized planets than previously thought
Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings from a team using the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars.…
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Peculiar planetary system architecture around three Orion stars explained
Peculiar planetary system architecture around three Orion stars explained Not only has the discovery of eoxplanets throughout our galaxy provided a host of new worlds for astronomers to catalogue and observe, but also thrown up new challenges about their formation. New work published in Science by an international team including Carnegie’s Jaehan Bae could explain…
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Scientists Discover Mysterious Spiral Structures around a “Planet Factory”
CfA Scientists Discover Mysterious Spiral Structures around a “Planet Factory” Scientists at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) announced today the discovery of a complex set of spiral arms extending to 1000 astronomical units from the young variable star, RU Lup. Source: www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2020-16
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Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun
Astronomers have found a planet like Earth orbiting a star like the sun The discovery of the exoplanet KOI-456.04 orbiting the star Kepler-160 suggests we should more aggressively look for habitable planets around sun-like stars. Source: www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/05/1002831/kepler-160-koi-456-04-earth-sun-exoplanet-habitable/
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Texas Astronomer Uses His 25-year-old Hubble Data to Confirm Planet Proxima Centauri c
Texas Astronomer Uses His 25-year-old Hubble Data to Confirm Planet Proxima Centauri c Fritz Benedict used data he collected from the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm the existence of Proxima c, the third known planet orbiting the star closest to our sun. Photo credit: NASA. Fritz Benedict has used data he took over two…
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Oumuamua Might Be a Giant Interstellar Hydrogen Iceberg
âOumuamua Might Be a Giant Interstellar Hydrogen Iceberg It isn’t an alien spaceship, but new research suggests the first known interstellar object to grace our solar system could be something even stranger. Source: www.wired.com/story/oumuamua-might-be-a-giant-interstellar-hydrogen-iceberg
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Searching Pulsars for Planets
Searching Pulsars for Planets A new study explores whether there are any exoplanets orbiting the well-observed NANOGrav pulsars. Source: aasnova.org/2020/04/27/searching-pulsars-for-planets/
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New research shows interstellar visitor 21/Borisov is not your average comet
New research shows interstellar visitor 21/Borisov is not your average comet Two new separate studies published in Nature today have revealed that our second interstellar visitor, 21/Borisov, packs in three times as much CO than any other comet found wandering in the inner Solar System – a feature that gives astronomers a clue…
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Sub-Neptune sized planet validated with the Habitable-zone Planet Finder
A signal originally detected by the Kepler spacecraft has been validated as an exoplanet using the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State team and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. The HPF provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from…
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New Exoplanet Search Strategy Claims First Discovery
New Exoplanet Search Strategy Claims First Discovery | Quanta Magazine By watching for a special kind of flare, astronomers have identified the fingerprints of an Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star. Source: www.quantamagazine.org/new-exoplanet-search-strategy-claims-first-discovery-20200218/
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NASA launches a new planet-hunting telescope using a giant balloon
NASA launches a new planet-hunting telescope using a giant balloon – TechCrunch A new telescope will seek out planets that resemble Earth from a height of around 125,000 feet, using special optical technology that will filter out light from the stars they orbit to provide a better view. The telescope is the product of UMass…
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Nasa’s chief scientist ‘worried’ world is not ready for discovery of life on Mars
Leading astronomer says discovery will open up ‘whole new line of thinking’ Source: www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-mars-life-discovery-space-exomars-rover-chief-scientist-jim-green-a9125076.html