Tag: Planets
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TESS planet-hunters add a ‘sub-Neptune’ world to discovery list, with more to come
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, or TESS, with an assortment of exoplanets. (NASA / GSFC / MIT Illustration) Less than a year after NASA’s TESS spacecraft was launched, the scientists behind the mission have unveiled their third confirmed planet, a weird alien world that’s between Earth and Neptune in size. And…
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Scientists report a super-Earth orbiting Barnard’s Star, a mere 6 light-years away
An artist’s conception shows what the surface of the reported planet known as Barnard’s Star b might look like. (ESO Illustration / M. Kornmesser) The astronomical team that found the nearest exoplanet at Proxima Centauri has done it again with the reported detection of a super-Earth orbiting Barnard’s Star, the second-closest star system to our…
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Farewell, Kepler: NASA’s planet-hunting probe runs out of gas, but mission goes on
Stylized artwork shows NASA’s Kepler space telescope among planetary systems. (NASA Illustration / Wendy Stenzel / Daniel Rutter) NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting telescope now belongs to the ages, with its fuel completely spent and its instruments shut down — but the planet quest continues, thanks to a treasure trove of downloaded data as well as a new…
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Hubble Space Telescope boosts evidence for first exomoon seen circling alien planet
An artist’s impression shows the Jupiter-sized exoplanet Kepler-1625b transiting its parent star with the Neptune-sized candidate exomoon in tow. (Dan Durda Illustration) With a lot of help from the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers now feel confident enough to publish their evidence for the first moon detected in orbit around a planet beyond our solar system.…
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Search for Planet Nine turns up a way-out dwarf planet that’s called ‘The Goblin’
The International Space Station leaves a streak above the Subaru Telescope in a long-exposure image. Observations using the Subaru Telescope led to the discovery of the mini-world known as The Goblin. (Subaru Telescope / NAOJ Photo / Hideaki Fujiwara) While searching for a hypothetical Planet Nine, astronomers found a distant mini-world that’s been given a…
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TESS probe finds first potential planets
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, with an alien sun and planet in the background. (NASA / GSFC Illustration) Astronomers on the team for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite mission, or TESS, are reporting their first potential planet discoveries, just days after the spacecraft’s first science image was unveiled. The…
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It’s prime time for watching Mars – plus a total lunar eclipse that you can see online
A global dust storm covers Mars’ disk in this image from the Hubble Space Telescope, captured on July 18. The planet’s two small moons, Deimos (left) and Phobos (right), appear in the lower half of the image. (NASA / ESA / STScI Photo) It’s no hoax: Mars is bigger and brighter in the night sky…
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NASA’s Kepler probe suspends planet hunt to download data as fuel runs near empty
News Brief: NASA has hit the pause button on observations by its most prolific planet-hunting probe, the Kepler space telescope, so that it can download 51 days’ worth science data without interruption. The reason? Kepler’s fuel tanks are close to empty. After the download, Kepler will resume data gathering — that is, assuming there’s any fuel…
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NASA’s Dawn probe snaps close-ups of Ceres’ formerly mysterious white spots
A mosaic of images from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows a prominent mound of bright material on the western side of Cerealia Facula on dwarf planet Ceres. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA / MPS / DLR / IDA Photo) The once-mysterious bright spots shining on the surface of the dwarf planet Ceres are getting their closest…
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It’s full of stars! NASA’s planet-hunting TESS probe sends back its first test image
This test image from one of the four cameras aboard the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, captures a swath of the southern sky along the plane of our galaxy. (NASA / MIT / TESS Photo) One month after its launch, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has sent back an initial test image that shows…