Exoplanets | SpaceRef

Exoplanets TOP STORY

Possible Exomoon Found

Exomoon,

Titan, Europa, Io and Phobos are just a few members of our solar system's pantheon of moons. Are there are other moons out there, orbiting planets beyond our sun?

Studying Other Worlds with the Help of a Starshade

This animation shows the prototype starshade, a giant structure designed to block the glare of stars so that future space telescopes can take pictures of planets.

Exoplanets

Death Stars in Orion Blast Planets Before They Even Form

The Orion Nebula is home to hundreds of young stars and even younger protostars known as proplyds.

Exoplanets

Nearby Star's Icy Debris Suggests 'Shepherd' Planet

An international team of astronomers exploring the disk of gas and dust around a nearby star have uncovered a compact cloud of poisonous gas formed by ongoing rapid-fire collisions among a swarm of icy, comet-like bodies.

Exoplanets

Kepler Finds a Very Wobbly Planet

Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat.

Exoplanets

Hubble Hangout: Disk Detective - Finding the Birthplace of Planets

Scientists are combing the galaxy looking for stars that could be harboring planet-forming disks. They need your help to explain this puzzling part of stellar evolution.

Exoplanets

Rare Brown Dwarf Discovery Provides Benchmark for Exoplanet Research

A team of researchers has directly imaged a very rare type of brown dwarf that can serve as a benchmark for studying objects with masses that lie between stars and planets.

Exoplanets

New Kind of Planet or a Failed Star?

An object discovered by astrophysicists at the University of Toronto nearly 500 light years away from the Sun may challenge traditional understandings about how planets and stars form.

Exoplanets

Newfound Planet Is Earth-mass But Gassy

An international team of astronomers has discovered the first Earth-mass planet that transits, or crosses in front of, its host star. KOI-314c is the lightest planet to have both its mass and physical size measured.

Exoplanets

Hubble Reveals Cloudy Weather on Extrasolar Planet

Weather forecasters on exoplanet GJ 1214b would have an easy job. Today's forecast: cloudy. Tomorrow: overcast. Extended outlook: more clouds.

Exoplanets

Are Comets the Key to Curious Fomalhaut Exoplanet System?

The nearby star Fomalhaut A hosts the most famous planetary system outside our own solar system, containing both an exoplanet and a spectacular ring of comets.

Exoplanets

Sub-Earth-Mass Moon Orbiting a Gas Giant Primary or a High Velocity Planetary System in the Galactic Bulge

We present the first microlensing candidate for a free-floating exoplanet-exomoon system, MOA-2011-BLG-262, with a primary lens mass of M_host ~ 4 Jupiter masses hosting a sub-Earth mass moon.

Exoplanets

First Earth-sized Rocky Exoplanet Found

A team of astronomers has found the first Earth-sized planet outside the solar system that has a rocky composition like that of Earth. This exoplanet, known as Kepler-78b, orbits its star very closely every 8.5 hours, making it much too hot to support life. The results are being published in the journal Nature.

Exoplanets

Misaligned Planets in a Distant Star System

Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star.

Exoplanets

A Strange Lonely Planet Found Without a Star

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, dubbed PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago -- a newborn in planet lifetimes.

Exoplanets