May 15, 2013
Planet-hunting on hold
The Kepler spacecraft is once again in safe mode.
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May 13, 2013
Grazing in the gap
Stefan Kraus and his team have discovered evidence of a planet forming in a star's dust disk, shedding new light on planet formation.
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May 09, 2013
1640 strikes again
The Project 1640 team has captured some spectacular spectra from a four-exoplanet system.
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May 06, 2013
Planets in a petri dish
Our galaxy is teeming with a wild variety of planets. In addition to our solar system's eight near-and-dear planets, there are more than 800 so-called exoplanets known to circle stars beyond our sun. One of the first "species" of exoplanets to be discovered is the hot Jupiters, also known as roasters.
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April 18, 2013
In the zone
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.
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April 09, 2013
Talkin' bout TESS
NASA's latest exoplanet mission is called TESS and is scheduled to launch in 2017.
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April 04, 2013
Yummy!
Astronomers watch as a rogue exoplanet is devoured by a black hole.
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March 19, 2013
Visions of vapor
Astronomers using Keck observatory have taken some of the most in-depth measurements of an exoplanet atmosphere yet.
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March 15, 2013
Cool confluence
Kepler, the moon, a comet, and Jupiter wrangle with the horns of Taurus.
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March 07, 2013
Small stars are a big deal
...and could be the best chance for finding life on an exoplanet
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February 28, 2013
Interstellar ultrasound
Astronomers with ESO's Very Large Telescope may be the first to directly observe an exoplanet in the midst of its formation.
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February 13, 2013
Moonstruck
As one of the first astronomers to seriously hunt for moons that orbit exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars beyond our sun, David Kipping has taken on an unusually challenging task.
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February 06, 2013
Bet on red
Kepler finds that nearby red dwarf stars may have Earth-size exoplanets.
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February 01, 2013
Retro-active
Astronomers with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have unraveled the mystery of a backwards-orbiting planet.
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January 09, 2013
Blankets of brown
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds.
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January 08, 2013
Amateur achievements
Planet Hunters participants find a gas giant and 42 confirmed planets in Kepler data.
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January 07, 2013
Kepler continues to get its kicks
NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet.
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January 07, 2013
A little help from its friends
Kepler's groundbreaking mission has been supported with an array of ground and space-based follow-up projects.
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January 04, 2013
Cosmic conversation
NExScI Executive Director Charles Beichman talks about exoplanets with KPCC's David Lazarus.
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January 03, 2013
Planets aplenty
New study confirms the galaxy is chock-full of other worlds.
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November 19, 2012
Shootin' a Sup-Jup
Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a "super-Jupiter" around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion.
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November 15, 2012
Float on
Astronomers have snapped a picture of what is very likely to be a free-floating orphan exoplanet.
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November 01, 2012
Seed belts
New study finds that asteroid belts of the right size and density may be key to creating habitable exoplanets.
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October 26, 2012
Q & A with a "genius"
PlanetQuest talks with Olivier Guyon about what it feels like to get the "genius" phone call and what he plans to do with the award.
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October 16, 2012
A new neighbor
Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting the star closest to our own.
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October 15, 2012
Fours to be reckoned with
The discovery of planets continues to expand beyond the domain of professional astronomers. A joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists has led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star that, in turn, is orbited by a second distant pair of stars.
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October 11, 2012
Guyon the genius
JPL scientist Olivier Guyon has been named one of the 2012 MacArthur Fellows, a prestigious award popularly known as the “genius grant.”
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September 28, 2012
Electric evidence
Scientists theorize that radiation-pummeled pulsar planets may be bathed in an "electromagnetic wake".
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September 28, 2012
Massive, but missing magnetism?
A new study finds that "super-Earths" may lack a magnetic field, which could make them difficult places for life to survive.
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September 14, 2012
A buzz-worthy find
NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments.
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September 11, 2012
Extreme life on eccentric exos?
While the hunt continues for the elusive Earth-like 'blue dot,' astronomers have discovered a collection of odd exoplanets.
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September 06, 2012
Earth-hunting, guerilla style
Exoplanet hunter John Johnson is spearheading a grassroots effort to build a lean, mean, Earth-hunting telescope in the hills of Southern California.
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August 28, 2012
Binary buddies
Kepler has found the first multiple-planet solar system orbiting a pair of stars, revealing a brand new kind of solar system.
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August 27, 2012
A ravenous red giant
Astronomers have discovered evidence of a planet that's been consumed by its "red giant" star. This event could mirror the fate of planets like Earth when our sun expands into its red giant phase.
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August 08, 2012
Where are the giants?
A group of astronomers including John Johnson of Caltech has found that data from Kepler may show that Jupiter-size planets might not be as easy to come by as smaller, rocky worlds like Earth.
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June 21, 2012
Odd couple
Astronomers have discovered a pair of neighboring planets with dissimilar densities orbiting very close to each other.
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May 08, 2012
Alien light forms
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time.
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April 04, 2012
Exo-extension
NASA's Kepler mission has been approved for extension through fiscal year 2016 based on a recommendation from the Agency’s Senior Review of its operating missions.
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March 29, 2012
Bounty of red dwarf worlds
A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighbourhood.
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February 21, 2012
NASA's Hubble reveals a new class of extrasolar planet
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
Huge, but habitable?
A newly-discovered super-Earth in a triple-star system could potentially be an Earth-like planet.
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January 11, 2012
Tiny trio
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
Plenty of planets
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
Kepler's big year
2011 showed NASA's Kepler mission finding its stride. 2012 could be even bigger.
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December 20, 2011
Sisters in size
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
Kepler's in the zone
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
Damp disk
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
Cosmic cradle captured
Keck astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet forming around its host star.
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July 14, 2011
Ten in transit
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
Students Build Planet-Hunting Miniature Satellite
Exoplanet CubeSat set to hitch a ride into space in 2012.
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May 18, 2011
Free-Floating Planets May be More Common Than Stars
So-called 'rogue planets' could litter the galaxy.
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May 10, 2011
Astronomers unveil portrait of 'super-exotic super-Earth:' Densest known rocky planet
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
NASA Telescope Ferrets Out Planet-Hunting Targets
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 Announces 2011 Carl Sagan Fellows
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
Winter thaws out with hot exoplanet news
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 changes the planetary scorecard
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
Direct Images of Disks Unravel Mystery of Planet Formation
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
NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in the Habitable Zone
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
NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Discovers Extraordinary New Planetary System
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
Inclined Orbits Prevail in Exoplanetary Systems
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 Discovers Its First Rocky Planet
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
Planet count tops 500
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
NASA's Spitzer Reveals First Carbon-Rich Planet
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
Double vision: New instrument casts its eyes to the sky
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
NASA Aids in Characterizing Super-Earth Atmosphere
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
An exoplanet from another galaxy
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
Using Planet Colors to Search for Alien Earths
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
Cosmic neighborhoods to avoid
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
NASA Survey Suggests Earth-Sized Planets are Common
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
Details of 'Earthlike' world will have to wait
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
Astronomers Find Weird, Warm Spot on an Exoplanet
Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.
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December 04, 2008
Planet Hunters: Angling for extraterrestrials and Earthlike worlds
As an avid fly fisherman and geocaching enthusiast, Robert Peters is a natural hunter, which makes him the perfect person to work on technology to help find Earthlike planets.
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October 03, 2008
Planet Hunters: On a quest for astronomy's holy grail
It's fitting that Sara Seager is fascinated by stories of explorers visiting uncharted places. From her groundbreaking work on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to her innovative theories about life on other worlds, Seager has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanet
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April 17, 2008
Planet Hunters: Photographer to the stars
Webster Cash's passion for space began when he saw his first planetarium show as a child. Now, as the principal investigator for one of NASA's future exoplanet mission proposals, Cash is on the cutting edge of ideas that could help change our perception of the universe.
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December 17, 2007
Planet Hunters: For Rachel Akeson, science is in the genes
You could say that science runs in Rachel Akeson's family. The daughter of two scientists, she knew she was going to be an astronomer by the time she was a third-grader. Now, in addition to having her hands full with her own young children, Akeson is studying young stars as they develop their own planetary families.
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July 18, 2007
Planet Hunters: Putting together the big picture in planet-finding
"I just do it for the pictures," laughs Dr. David Imel as he points to the myriad posters of stars and galaxies hanging from the walls in his office at Caltech. But the picture Imel wants to see most doesn't exist yet - a pale blue dot orbiting a distant star. Another Earth.
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February 05, 2007
Planet Hunters: Finding beauty in the universe
Beth A. Biller overcame her fear of math to pursue her career as a serious astronomer. Her research has helped produce some of the sharpest images of extrasolar worlds ever obtained.
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October 11, 2006
Planet Hunters: A conversation with Navigator Chief Scientist Wes Traub
Where are the other Earths? Answering that question is just the first step in NASA's long-range quest to look for life around stars beyond our solar system, according to Dr. Wes Traub. And to answer it, he says, we have to go into space.
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December 16, 2005
Planet Hunters: Burning the midnight oil at 13,600 feet
Robert Ligon is an engineer, not an astronaut. Nonetheless, his work takes place on an otherworldly landscape miles above the Earth, where the air is thin and clear. He is part of a team that is pushing the technology envelope to aid in NASA's search for new worlds.
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January 19, 2005
Planet Hunters: Former athlete flexes new muscles for planet search
JPL physicist Ken Brown aims high. Twice named All-American in track and field, he placed 12th in the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trails qualifier in high jump. Now, he has his sights set on even loftier goals - building an instrument to spot hard-to-see planets outside our solar system and inspiring students to join in the quest.
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September 22, 2004
Planet Hunters: A conversation with 'Origins' host Neil Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the world's most popular lecturers on astronomy, talks about the PBS "Origins" series, public perceptions of science, and the childhood influences that led him to become a scientist and an ambassador to the cosmos.
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April 07, 2003
Planet Hunters: Geoff Marcy predicts discovey of another 'Earth' within decade
Astronomers have been discovering large planets around other stars by the dozen in recent years, but are there really any other places that look like Earth out there? In a recent interview, planet-hunter extraordinaire Geoff Marcy said the answer may be closer than you think.
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April 01, 2002
Planet Hunters: A conversation with David Charbonneau
The detection of small, Earth-like worlds outside our solar system may be closer than you think, according to Caltech's David Charbonneau.
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