Tag: exoplanets
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James Webb Space Telescope shipped to Texas for its biggest test yet
The primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope pictured at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn The centerpiece of the James Webb Space Telescope has arrived at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for a three-month test to ensure the observatory’s sensors and gold-coated mirrors work in the frigid…
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With an eye on growing cost, NASA aims for 2025 launch of next ‘great observatory’
Artist’s concept of the WFIRST spacecraft. Credit: NASA NASA managers say the WFIRST mission, the next in the agency’s line of powerful observatories after the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, could cost around $3.2 billion after budgeting for a novel first-of-its-kind instrument to probe the make-up of planets around nearby stars and a bigger-than-expected launch…
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Newfound super-Earth could be the best planet for analyzing alien atmospheres
An artist’s impression shows a super-Earth passing across the disk of the faint red star known as LHS 1140. (CfA Illustration / M. Weiss) It’s not the closest potentially habitable planet, but astronomers say a world 40 percent wider than Earth could be one of the best places to target in the search for life beyond…
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Star found with record seven Earth-size planets
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances.Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech Astronomers have discovered seven roughly Earth-size planets very close to a cool dwarf star some 39 light years from Earth, including three orbiting…
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Looking for life: Scientists find 7 possibly Earthlike planets orbiting ultracool star
A diagram shows seven exoplanets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1. If the planets were transported to our own solar system, they’d all lie within Mercury’s orbit. (ESO Illustration) A second look at an exoplanet system 40 light-years from Earth has brought a bonanza for astronomers: not two, not three, but seven alien worlds…
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Watch a video replay of NASA’s exoplanet announcement
NASA announced Wednesday the discovery of seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star 39 light-years from Earth, and three of the rocky worlds may have the right conditions to support life. Read our full story. Email the author. Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.
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Very Large Telescope joins Breakthrough search for Alpha Centauri’s planets
The ESO’s Very Large Telescope looms in the foreground of this image, and a star map has been superimposed on the night sky to show the locations of Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri. (ESO Photo) One of the most powerful observing instruments on Earth, the Very Large Telescope, will join the search for potentially habitable…
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Video: How will we get to Alpha Centauri? Researchers work on an antimatter drive
An artist’s conception shows a positron rocket engine. (Positronics Research via NASA) Project Blue’s scientists still have to raise more than $800,000 over the next 15 days to reach their initial crowdfunding goal for a mission to observe Alpha Centauri’s alien planets, but they’re already thinking about how future explorers could get there. It would take…
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Project Blue kicks off $1 million crowdfunding campaign to seek out Alpha Centauri’s alien Earths
An artist’s concept shows Project Blue’s telescope monitoring Alpha Centauri. (Credit: Project Blue) How much would you pay to find out whether Alpha Centauri’s twin suns possess blue planets like Earth? Project Blue is hoping it’s at least $10, and maybe thousands of dollars. That’s the point behind the project’s Kickstarter campaign, which aims to raise…
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Proxima’s progress: Why it’ll take years to learn what closest exoplanet is really like
An artist’s conception shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b, with the red dwarf Proxima Centauri near the horizon. (Credi:t: M. Kornmesser / ESO) University of Washington astronomer Rory Barnes says Proxima Centauri b is the biggest discovery in 20 years for planet hunters like himself, but it could take another 20…