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New Worlds to Explore? Kepler Spacecraft Finds 750 Exoplanet Candidates

[/caption] The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft’s observations. “This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist. “The number of candidate planets is actually greater than …

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Weird Collection of Worlds in the Latest Cache of CoRoT Expoplanets

[/caption] The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) spacecraft has been busy, and using this exoplanet-finding-machine astronomers recently found six new extrasolar planets, which contain an odd assortment of new worlds. They include shrunken-Saturns to bloated hot Jupiters, as well a rare brown dwarf with 60 times the mass of Jupiter. “Each of these planets is …

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Astronomy Without A Telescope – Bringing The Planetology Home

We keep finding all these exoplanets. Our detection methods still only pick out the bigger ones, but we’re getting better at this all the time. One day in the not-too-distant future it is conceivable that we will find one with a surface gravity in the 1G range – orbiting its star in, what we anthropomorphically …

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Could An Amateur Astronomer Snap a Picture of an Exoplanet?

[/caption] Using their backyard telescope, today? No; however, this image of three exoplanets required just 1.5 meters (diameter; 60 inches) of a telescope mirror, not vastly larger than the biggest backyard ‘scope. These particular exoplanets orbit the star HR 8799, and have been imaged directly before, by one of the 10-meter (33-foot) Keck telescopes and …

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Mitch’s Mystery Star, Curiouser and Curiouser

[/caption] “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, ‘hmm… that’s funny…’” (Isaac Asimov) A few short years ago, Zooite Hanny van Arkel discovered Hanny’s Voorwerp in an SDSS image of a galaxy (“What’s the blue stuff below? Anyone?”), and a …

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Mystery Object Found Orbiting Brown Dwarf

[/caption] Big planet or companion brown dwarf? Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unusual object orbiting a brown dwarf, and its discovery could fuel additional debate about what exactly constitutes a planet. The object circles a nearby brown dwarf in the Taurus star-forming region with an orbit approximately …

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Using Gravitational Lensing to Measure Age and Size of Universe

[/caption] Handy little tool, this gravitational lensing! Astronomers have used it to measure the shape of stars, look for exoplanets, and measure dark matter in distant galaxies. Now its being used to measure the size and age of the Universe. Researchers say this new use of gravitation lensing provides a very precise way to measure …

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Ephemerides

[/caption] Ephemerides is the plural form of ephemeris; one ephemeris, two (three, four, …) ephemerides. Why such a strange word? Why not ‘ephemerises’? Because of its Greek-via-Latin origin, and because it’s a word rarely used outside an academic/technical setting (there are only a few other words in English which form plurals in this way, one …

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