Good News! Red Dwarfs Blast Their Superflares out the Poles, Sparing Their Planets From Destruction
The stellar flares of red dwarfs are mostly directed from their poles, which is good news for potentially habitable planets.
To Take the Best Direct Images of Exoplanets With Space Telescopes, we’re Going to Want Starshades
The Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has released a special edition of papers dedicated to educating the public about Starshade and what it can do to narrow the search for Earth-like exoplanets.
Most Exoplanets won’t Receive Enough Radiation to Support an Earth-Like Biosphere
According to new research, most extrasolar planets do not get enough radiation to support photosynthesis, which places limits on how many might be habitable.
What’s the Connection Between the Chemistry of a Star and the Formation of its Planets?
Scientists seem to have come up with a new parlor game – how many ways can we potentially detect exoplanets? The two most common methods, the transit method and the Doppler method, each have their own problems. Alternative methods are starting to sprout up, and a new one was recently proposed by Jacob Nibauer, an …
The Moons of Rogue Planets Could Have Liquid Surface Water and Thick Atmospheres. They Could be Habitable
A rocky world might not need a star to be habitable. It might just need to orbit a large gas planet.
Just Some of the Planets That TESS Has Found Nearby
Using data from TESS and a number of other observatories, an international team has found a system with three exoplanets relatively close to Earth.
It's Starting to Look Like Super-Earths Really are Just Great big Terrestrial Planets
New research shows there is a divide between how gas planets and rocky worlds form.
What Are Extrasolar Planets?
For countless generations, human beings have looked out at the night sky and wondered if they were alone in the Universe. With the discovery of other planets in our Solar System, the true extent of the Milky Way galaxy, and other galaxies beyond our own, this question has only deepened and become more profound. And …
A new Class of Exoplanets can Shrink, From Subneptunes Into Superearths
Mighty planets can be whittled down, leaving behind only their rocky cores, becoming nothing bigger than superearths. While astronomers had long suspected that this could happen, a new study reveals that it can occur in as little as a billion years.
A Sunlike Star Found With Four (No, Five!) Exoplanets Orbiting It
Thanks to an international team astronomers led from MIT, a nearby Sun-like star has been spotted with a system of five exoplanets, making it the perfect target for observations with the James Webb Space Telescope.