exoplanets
A New Way to Search for Exomoons
We'd love to find another planet like Earth. Not exactly like Earth; that's kind of ridiculous and probably a little…
Ground-Based Observatories Could use Starshades to see Planets too
All hail the occulter: an orbiting starshade for ground-based telescopes. (more…)
Ocean Worlds With Hydrogen-Rich Atmospheres Could be the Perfect Spots for Life
A new study has identified another class of exoplanet that could drastically increase the odds of finding life beyond the…
Rocky Planet Found With Only Half the Mass of Venus
When it comes to finding exoplanets, size matters, but so does weight. The larger and heavier the planet, the more…
Astronomers Find a Huge Planet Orbiting its Star at 6,000 Times the Earth-Sun Distance
Tracking exoplanets is hard - especially when that exoplanet is so far away from its parent star that the normally…
This is how you get Tatooines. Binary Star Planet Formation
One of the less appreciated aspects of George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars was that he predicted the existence of…
Incredible! Astronomers see a Moon-Forming Disk Around a Newly Forming Planet
Planetary formation is a complicated, multilayered process. Even with the influx of data on exoplanets, there are still only two…
There are Probably Many More Earth-Sized Worlds Than Previously Believed
In the past decade, the discovery of extrasolar planets has accelerated immensely. To date, 4,424 exoplanets have been confirmed in…
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…
A Lunar Farside Telescope Could Detect Exoplanets Through Their Magnetospheres
Earth's ionosphere blocks us from seeing radio aurora on distant worlds, but a radio telescope on the Moon would let…