February 21, 2012
Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It's smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.
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February 02, 2012
A newly-discovered super-Earth in a triple-star system could potentially be an Earth-like planet.
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January 11, 2012
Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun.
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January 11, 2012
Our Milky Way galaxy contains, on average, a minimum of one planet for every star, according to a new statistical study.
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January 01, 2012
2011 showed NASA's Kepler mission finding its stride. 2012 could be even bigger.
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December 20, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system.
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December 05, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count.
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October 20, 2011
Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star.
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October 19, 2011
Keck astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet forming around its host star.
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July 14, 2011
An international team, including Oxford University scientists, has discovered ten new planets. Amongst them is one orbiting a star perhaps only a few tens of million years old, twin Neptune-sized planets, and a rare Saturn-like world.
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May 27, 2011
Exoplanet CubeSat set to hitch a ride into space in 2012.
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May 18, 2011
So-called 'rogue planets' could litter the galaxy.
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May 10, 2011
An international team of astronomers today revealed details of a 'super-exotic' exoplanet that would make the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar pale in comparison.
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April 07, 2011
Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars could very well be home to the easiest-to-see alien planets.
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March 29, 2011
NASA has selected five potential discoverers as the recipients of the 2011 Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships, named after the late astronomer. The Carl Sagan Fellowship takes a theme-based approach, in which fellows will focus on compelling scientific questions, such as "Are there Earth-like planets orbiting other stars?"
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March 28, 2011
Kepler's big annoucement of over 1,000 exoplanet candidates in early February continues to reverberate in the astronomy world. Here are some other news stories that are heating things up in the realm of exoplanets.
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March 07, 2011
Kepler's latest data release included the discovery of an exotic six-planet solar system and five Earth-size worlds, but the bigger story may be in the hundreds of new "candidate planets" that were announced.
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February 17, 2011
The fruits of the SEEDS (Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru) Project, led by Motohide Tamura at NAOJ (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), are accumulating.
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February 02, 2011
Is our Milky Way galaxy home to other planets the size of Earth? Are Earth-sized planets common or rare? NASA scientists seeking answers to those questions recently revealed their discovery.
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February 02, 2011
Scientists using NASA's Kepler, a space telescope, recently discovered six planets made of a mix of rock and gases orbiting a single sun-like star, known as Kepler-11, which is located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth.
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January 12, 2011
A research team led by astronomers from the University of Tokyo and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has discovered that inclined orbits may be typical rather than rare for exoplanetary systems -- those outside of our solar system.
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January 12, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
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January 02, 2011
A big year for exoplanet exploration came to a fitting end in December when astronomers announced new exoplanet discoveries that brought the total number of known worlds outside our solar system to over 500.
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December 08, 2010
Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with previously published ground-based observations.
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December 06, 2010
The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has taken its first images of the star Beta Peg in the constellation Pegasus -- an encouraging start for an instrument designed to probe the cosmic neighborhoods where Earth-like planets could exist.
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December 01, 2010
A team of astronomers, including two NASA Sagan Fellows, has made the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere, by using a ground-based telescope.
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November 18, 2010
Over the last 15 years, astronomers have detected nearly 500 exoplanets orbiting ordinary stars in our cosmic neighborhood. Now, for the first time, astronomers have detected an exoplanet whose origin appears to lie outside our own galaxy.
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November 02, 2010
Earth is invitingly blue. Mars is angry red. Venus is brilliant white. Astronomers have learned that a planet's "true colors" can reveal important details.
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October 29, 2010
With new evidence suggesting that the galaxy could be full of habitable planets like ours, the universe may be a more friendly place than anyone might have imagined. However, not every planet is lucky enough to have the right conditions for life. Here are some examples of how things can go very wrong.
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October 28, 2010
Nearly one in four stars similar to the sun may host planets as small as Earth, according to a new study funded by NASA and the University of California.
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October 25, 2010
Just how similar to Earth is the newly discovered planet orbiting the star Gliese 581? Until astronomers can take a closer look with a space-based exoplanet mission, that answer is likely to remain a mystery, NASA experts said.
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October 19, 2010
Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.
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