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Exoplanets TOP STORY

Hubble Observes Pitch Black Planet

WASP-12b

Astronomers have discovered that the well-studied exoplanet WASP-12b reflects almost no light, making it appear essentially pitch black.

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Exoplanets

BoldlyGo Institute and NASA Sign Space Act Agreement for Joint Cooperation on Project Blue Mission

Project Blue Mission

The BoldlyGo Institute (BoldlyGo) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have signed a Space Act Agreement to cooperate on "Project Blue," a mission to search for potentially habitable Earth-size planets in the Alpha Centauri system using a specially designed space telescope.

Exoplanets

Tracking The Birth Of A Super-Earth

How exactly planets form is still an open question with a number of outstanding problems.

Exoplanets

A Planet That Is Hotter Than Most Stars

A newly discovered Jupiter-like world is so hot, it's being vaporized by its own star.

Exoplanets

Exoplanet HAT-P-26b Has A Primitive Atmosphere

A study combining observations from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes reveals that the distant planet HAT-P-26b has a primitive atmosphere composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.

Exoplanets

Brown Dwarf Is Actually a Planetary Mass Object

Sometimes a brown dwarf is actually a planet -- or planet-like anyway.

Exoplanets

NASA: Iceball Planet Discovered Through Microlensing

Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun.

Exoplanets

Spring Cleaning in an Infant Star System

This image depicts the dusty disc encircling the young, isolated star HD 169142.

Exoplanets

Fledgling Stars Try to Prevent Neighbors from Birthing Planets

Newly formed stars are surrounded by a disc of dense gas and dust. This is called the protoplanetary disc, as material sticks together within it to form planets.

Exoplanets

Visualizing Debris Disks to Understand Planetary System Evolution

When planets first begin to form, the aftermath of the process leaves a ring of rocky and icy material that's rotating and colliding around the young central star like a celestial roller derby.

Exoplanets

Astronomers Discover a Missing Link in Planet Formation

Planets are thought to form in the disks of dust and gas found around young stars. But astronomers have struggled to assemble a complete theory of their origin that explains how the initial dust develops into planetary systems.

Exoplanets

Studying TRAPPIST-1 With James Webb Space Telescope

With the discovery of seven earth-sized planets around the TRAPPIST-1 star 40 light years away, astronomers are looking to the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to help us find out if any of these planets could possibly support life.

Exoplanets

Nearby Star Has 7 Earth-Sized Worlds - Most In Habitable Zone

It will be announced tomorrow by NASA that Michael Gillon et al have confirmed 4 more Earth-sized planets circling TRAPPIST-1 in addition to 3 already discovered.

Exoplanets

Winds of Rubies and Sapphires On HAT-P-7b

Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on a planet 16 times larger than Earth, over 1000 light years away - the first time ever that weather systems have been found on a gas giant outside our solar system - according to new research by the University of Warwick.

Exoplanets