Five Snapshots of how the Earth Looked at Key Points in its History Could Help us Find Habitable Exoplanets
A study by Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute provides models of how Earth looked like over time, which could help us find habitable exoplanets
Are Low Density “Cotton Candy” Exoplanets Actually Just Regular Planets With Rings?
There’s a type of exoplanet that astronomers sometimes refer to as cotton candy planets, or super-puffs. They’re mysterious, because their masses don’t match up with their extremely large radii. The two characteristics imply a planet with an extremely low density. In our Solar System, there’s nothing like them, and finding them in distant solar systems …
Detecting Exoplanets Through Their Exoauroras
A team of scientists from the Netherlands have proposed an exciting new approach for finding exoplanets: look for signs of auroras!
CHEOPS Just Opened Its Eyes to Start Studying Known Exoplanets, We Should See the First Picture in a Few Weeks
The CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite) spacecraft just opened the cover on its telescope. The spacecraft was launched on December 18th 2019 and has so far performed flawlessly. In one or two weeks we could get our first images from the instrument.
“Super-Puff” Exoplanets Aren’t Like Anything We’ve Got in the Solar System
A new study by a team led from the University of Colorado, Boulder, has discovered a rare and unique class of exoplanet that has the density of cotton candy.
ESA’s CHEOPS Just Launched. We’re About to Learn a LOT More About Exoplanets
The CHEOPS mission is underway. On December 18th, the exoplanet-studying spacecraft launched from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana aboard a Soyuz-Fregat rocket. Initial signals from CHEOPS show that the launch was a success.
Tatooines everywhere? Many of the Exoplanets Already Discovered are in Multi-Star Systems
Right now, we know of about 4,000 confirmed exoplanets, mostly thanks to the Kepler mission. TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, will likely raise that 4000 by a lot. But what about the stars that all of these planets orbit? A new study from the Astrophysical Institute and University Observatory of the University of Jena …
Astronomers See the Wreckage from a Collision Between Exoplanets
The history of our Solar System is punctuated with collisions. Collisions helped create the terrestrial planets and end the reign of the dinosaurs. And a massive collision between Earth and an ancient body named Theia likely created the Moon. Now astronomers have found of evidence of a collision between two exoplanets in a distant solar …
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Snowball Exoplanets Might Be Better for Life Than We Thought
When astronomers discover a new exoplanet, one of the first considerations is if the planet is in the habitable zone, or outside of it. That label largely depends on whether or not the temperature of the planet allows liquid water. But of course it’s not that simple. A new study suggests that frozen, icy worlds …
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NASA Promised More Smaller, Earth-size Exoplanets. TESS is Delivering.
When NASA launched TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) in 2018, it had a specific goal. While its predecessor, the Kepler spacecraft, found thousands of exoplanets, many of them were massive gas giants. TESS was sent into space with a promise: to find smaller planets similar in size to Earth and Neptune, orbiting stable stars without …
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