32 new exoplanets found
The latest batch of exoplanets announced today comprises no less than 32 new discoveries. Including these new results, data from HARPS have led to the discovery of more than 75 exoplanets in 30 different planetary systems. view more (2009-10-20)
Dirty stars make good solar system hosts
Some stars are lonely behemoths, with no surrounding planets or asteroids, while others sport a skirt of attendant planetary bodies. New research published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters explains why the composition of the stars often indicates whether their light shines into deep space, or whether a small fraction shines onto... view more... (2009-10-07)
Simulation suggests rocky exoplanet has bizarre atmosphere
So accustomed are we to the sunshine, rain, fog and snow of our home planet that we find it next to impossible to imagine a different atmosphere and other forms of precipitation. view more (2009-10-01)
First solid evidence for a rocky exoplanet
The longest set of HARPS measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b, revealing its mass as five times that of Earth's. view more (2009-09-16)
IBEX spacecraft detects fast neutral hydrogen coming from the moon
NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence. view more (2009-06-19)
The search for ET just got easier
Astronomers using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope (WHT) on La Palma have confirmed an effective way to search the atmospheres of planets for signs of life, vastly improving our chances of finding alien life outside our solar system. view more (2009-06-11)
New technique could find water on Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns
Since the early 1990s astronomers have discovered more than 300 planets orbiting stars other than our sun, nearly all of them gas giants like Jupiter. view more (2009-05-26)
European team finds smallest transiting extrasolar planet ever
The CoRoT satellite has discovered a planet only twice as large as the Earth orbiting a star slightly smaller than the Sun. It is the smallest extrasolar planet (planet outside our solar system) whose radius has ever been measured. view more (2009-02-03)
Wobbly planets could reveal Earth-like moons
Moons outside our Solar System with the potential to support life have just become much easier to detect, thanks to research by an astronomer at University College London (UCL). view more (2008-12-12)
Scientists Discover New Planet Orbiting Dangerously Close to Giant Star
A team of astronomers from Penn State and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland has discovered a new planet that is closely orbiting a red-giant star, HD 102272, which is much older than our own Sun. view more (2008-11-19)
Universally Speaking, Earthlings Share a Nice Neighborhood
We don't have spacecraft to take us outside our solar system--not yet, at least. Still, astronomers thought they had a pretty good understanding of how our solar system formed and in turn, how others formed. view more (2008-08-11)
COROT finds exoplanet orbiting Sun-like star
A team of European scientists working with COROT have discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star slightly more massive than the Sun. After just 555 days in orbit, the mission has now observed more than 50 000 stars and is adding significantly to our knowledge of the fundamental workings of stars. view more (2008-07-28)
A Trio of Super-Earths
Today, at an international conference, a team of European astronomers announced a remarkable breakthrough in the field of extra-solar planets. Using the HARPS instrument at the ESO La Silla Observatory, they have found a triple system of super-Earths around the star HD 40307. view more (2008-06-17)
A Planet in Progress?
Scientists are one step closer to understanding how new planets form, thanks to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and carried out by a team of astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. view more (2008-03-27)
Polarization technique focuses limelight
An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich's Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. view more (2007-12-27)
COROT surprises a year after launch
The space-borne telescope, COROT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits), has just completed its first year in orbit. The observatory has brought in surprises after over 300 days of scientific observations. view more (2007-12-21)
The fine line between stability and instability -- when do gas giants reach the point of no return?
Planetary scientists at UCL have identified the point at which a star causes the atmosphere of an orbiting gas giant to become critically unstable, as reported in this week's Nature (December 6). view more (2007-12-06)
XO-3b: Supersized planet or oasis in the 'brown dwarf desert'?
The latest find from an international planet-hunting team of amateur and professional astronomers is one of the oddest extrasolar planets ever cataloged -- a mammoth orb more than 13 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star in less than four days. view more (2007-05-31)
28 new planets, 7 new brown dwarfs reported by California, Carnegie team
The world's largest and most prolific team of planet hunters announced today (Monday, May 28) the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, increasing to 236 the total number of known exoplanets. view more (2007-05-30)
Astronomers find first habitable Earth-like planet
Astronomers have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date, an exoplanet with a radius only 50% larger than the Earth and capable of having liquid water. view more (2007-04-25)
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