Exoplanets | SpaceRef

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An 18-hour Year Planet Is On The Edge Of Destruction

Mars Imaged by Hubble

Astronomers from the University of Warwick have observed an exoplanet orbiting a star in just over 18 hours, the shortest orbital period ever observed for a planet of its type.

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Exoplanets

TESS Mission Uncovers Its First World with Two Stars

TOI 1338 b

In 2019, when Wolf Cukier finished his junior year at Scarsdale High School in New York, he joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as a summer intern. His job was to examine variations in star brightness captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and uploaded to the Planet Hunters TESS citizen science project.

Exoplanets

Massive Gas Disk Raises Questions About Planet Formation Theory

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas.

Exoplanets

'Cotton Candy' Planet Mysteries Unravel in New Hubble Observations

New data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have provided the first clues to the chemistry of two of these super-puffy planets, which are located in the Kepler 51 system.

Exoplanets

CHEOPS Space Telescope to Investigate Extrasolar Planets

On 17 December 2019 at 05:54 local time (09:54 CET [08:45 UTC/GMT]), the European Space Agency (ESA) CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS) space telescope is scheduled to lift off from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on board a Soyuz launcher.

Exoplanets

Gas Giant Exoplanet Composition Not Determined By Its Host Star

A surprising analysis of the composition of gas giant exoplanets and their host stars shows that there isn't a strong correlation between their compositions when it comes to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, according to new work led by Carnegie's Johanna Teske and published in the Astronomical Journal.

Exoplanets

Simulations Explain Giant Exoplanets With Eccentric, Close-in Orbits

As planetary systems evolve, gravitational interactions between planets can fling some of them into eccentric elliptical orbits around the host star, or even out of the system altogether.

Exoplanets

When Exoplanets Collide

A dramatic glimpse of the aftermath of a collision between two exoplanets is giving scientists a view of what can happen when planets crash into each other. A similar event in our own solar system may have formed the moon.

Exoplanets

Cascades Of Gas Around Young Star Indicate Early Stages of Planet Formation

What does a gestating baby planet look like? New research in Nature by a team including Carnegie's Jaehan Bae investigated the effects of three planets in the process of forming around a young star, revealing the source of their atmospheres.

Exoplanets

Liquifying A Rocky Exoplanet

Rocky exoplanets that are around Earth-size are comparatively small, which makes them incredibly difficult to detect and characterise using telescopes.

Exoplanets

Many Gas Giant Exoplanets Waiting To Be Discovered

There is an as-yet-unseen population of Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, awaiting discovery by future missions like NASA's WFIRST space telescope, according to new models of gas giant planet formation by Carnegie's Alan Boss, described in an upcoming publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

Exoplanets

Hints Of A Volcanically Active Exomoon

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active body in our solar system. Today, there are indications that an active moon outside our solar system, an exo-Io, could be hidden at the exoplanet system WASP-49b.

Exoplanets

Constraining the Formation of the Four Terrestrial Planets in the Solar System

To reproduce the orbits and masses of the terrestrial planets (analogs) of the solar system, most studies scrutinize simulations for success as a batch. However, there is insufficient discussion in the literature on the likelihood of forming planet analogs simultaneously in the same system (analog system).

Exoplanets

Hubble Uncovers a 'Heavy Metal' Exoplanet Shaped Like a Football

How can a planet be "hotter than hot?" The answer is when heavy metals are detected escaping from the planet's atmosphere, instead of condensing into clouds.

Exoplanets

Confirmation of Toasty TESS Planet Leads to Surprising Find of Promising World

A piping hot planet discovered by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has pointed the way to additional worlds orbiting the same star, one of which is located in the star's habitable zone.

Exoplanets

TESS Discovers Three New Worlds

NASA's newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), has discovered three new worlds -- one slightly larger than Earth and two of a type not found in our solar system -- orbiting a nearby star.