By Paul Scott Anderson, on November 13th, 2019
Artist’s concept of the ARIEL spacecraft on its way to Lagrange Point 2 (L2). Image Credit: ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office
Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered so far – just over 4,000 now actually – with thousands more expected to be found in the near future. But these worlds are very far away, so […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on February 20th, 2017
Spectacular view of Jupiter’s south pole from Juno, taken on Feb. 2, 2017 at 6:06 a.m. PT (9:06 a.m. ET), from an altitude of about 62,800 miles (101,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops (enhanced color version). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/John Landino
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been orbiting the gas giant planet Jupiter since July […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on March 31st, 2016
A simulation showing the turbulent atmosphere of exoplanet HD 80606b, based on data gathered with the Spitzer space telescope. This hot Jupiter-type world has one of the most elongated orbits known for an exoplanet, one that resembles the orbits of comets in our Solar System. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT/Principia College
Seen from the perspective […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on June 30th, 2015
An artist’s concept of the vast envelope of atomic hydrogen that envelopes the nearby helium-dominated exoplanet Gliese 436b. The radiation pressure from the planet’s host star causes the gradual escape over time of significant amounts of hydrogen from Gliese 436b’s atmosphere into space, which subsequently forms a large comet-like tail that follows the […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on May 23rd, 2015 An artist’s rendering of the possible weather and atmospheric circulation patterns on hot Jupiters. A new research by a team of astronomers that was based on data taken with NASA’s Kepler space telescope, studied the phase variations that occur as different portions of these planets are illuminated by their host stars as seen […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on March 6th, 2015 Artist’s conception of the quadruple star system 30 Arietis. The primary star, called 30 Arietis B, has a companion (the small “red dwarf” star shown at upper left). This pair of stars is itself locked in a long-distance orbit with another pair of stars (upper right), known as 30 Arietis A. A team […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on February 9th, 2015 Artist’s concept of the recently discovered, tightly packed, and ancient exoplanetary system named Kepler-444. Astroseismic studies of the star’s oscillations, allowed astronomers to determine that it is the oldest planetary system discovered to date, with an age of approximately 11 billion years. Image Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine/University of Birmingham
“Nearly a hundred […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on October 17th, 2014 Artist’s conception of an ice giant type exoplanet. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)
Many different kinds of exoplanets have been found by astronomers, from giant “hot Jupiters” and “super Earths” to smaller rocky worlds like Earth or Mars. Now, another type has been discovered, an “ice giant” similar to Uranus or Neptune in […]
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By Paul Scott Anderson, on October 12th, 2014 Graphic depicting how WASP-43b orbits its star, always keeping the same hemisphere facing the star, much like how the Moon always keeps the same hemisphere facing the Earth. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)
Being able to find exoplanets orbiting distant stars is a major accomplishment in itself, and fine-tuning the […]
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By Leonidas Papadopoulos, on July 30th, 2014 This is an artistic illustration of the gas giant planet HD 209458b in the constellation Pegasus. The planet was recently studied by astronomers alongside two other similar extrasolar worlds, for their abundance in water. To the surprise of astronomers, they have found much less water vapor in the planets’ atmospheres than standard planet-formation […]
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