Tag: exoplanets
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‘Super-puff’ planets add a cotton candy flavor to the search for alien worlds
An illustration depicts the sunlike star Kepler 51 and three giant planets that have an extraordinarily low density. (NASA / ESA / STScI / Hustak, Olmsted, Player and Summers) Readings from the Hubble Space Telescope have shed light on a bizarre class of alien planets that have the density of cotton candy. The “super-puff” planets…
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Not so far, far away: How the Star Wars galaxy falls short of the real-life search for planets
Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tatooine, and its two suns are a good example of science echoing Star Wars. Or is it the other way around? (Lucasfilm Photo) Over the past 42 years, filmgoers have seen exotic worlds come to life in a succession of Star Wars movies — a series that is now coming to…
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3-D climate modeling could fine-tune the search for faraway signs of alien life
An artist’s conception shows a hypothetical planet with two moons orbiting within the habitable zone of an M-dwarf star. (NASA / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Illustration / D. Aguilar) Astronomers have identified thousands of stars that have planets, and that number could mushroom even faster when waves of next-generation telescopes come online. But where are…
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Unpacking the proposed exo-planet imaging telescope HabEx
As part of NASA’s continued effort to ensure a steady supply of astrophysics and astronomy missions, the agency is undertaking the Astro2020: Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics. Currently, in the “Concept Study” phase, the survey includes proposals for four large-scale space telescopes – including the Habitable Exoplanet Observatory (HabEx). HabEx would facilitate direct observation…
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Halfway through all-sky survey, NASA’s planet-hunting TESS mission gets extension
Artist’s concept of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Credit: NASA NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, fresh off a two-year extension to keep operating through 2022, has turned its cameras to image the northern sky after cataloguing nearly 1,000 candidate planets around other stars in the first year of its mission. The TESS mission reached the…
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TESS probe helps scientists find potentially habitable planet, 31 light-years away
An artist’s conception depicts GJ 357 d orbiting its host star. (Cornell University Illustration / Jack Madden) Astronomers are sharing a flood of findings from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, including the detection of a potentially habitable super-Earth far beyond our solar system. The planet is said to circle an M-type dwarf star…
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Breakthrough Watch and ESO kick off the search for more planets at Alpha Centauri
The NEAR instrument, shown here mounted on one of the telescopes at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope facility, came into use with ESO’s VISIR imager and spectrometer on May 21. (ESO / NEAR Collaboration Photo) The European Southern Observatory and the billionaire-backed Breakthrough Watch program say they have achieved first light with a…
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NASA to shut down Spitzer Space Telescope early next year
This infrared view of the butterfly-shaped W40 nebula, a star-forming cloud of gas and dust 1,400 light-years from Earth, was captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech After a search for an outside funding source turned up empty, NASA plans to end observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope in January to conclude a 16-year…
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NASA selects mission to probe the history of galaxies
Artist’s concept of the SPHEREx spacecraft in orbit. Credit: Caltech NASA has selected a space telescope named SPHEREx for launch in 2023 on a mission to survey the sky in near-infrared wavelengths, collecting spectral data to study the origins of the universe and ices in our own galaxy that could help seed life on planets.…
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NASA selects mission to probe the history of galaxies
Artist’s concept of the SPHEREx spacecraft in orbit. Credit: Caltech NASA has selected a space telescope named SPHEREx for launch in 2023 on a mission to survey the sky in near-infrared wavelengths, collecting spectral data to study the origins of the universe and ices in our own galaxy that could help seed life on planets.…