exoplanets
Seeing the Phases of Exoplanets
[/caption] Everyone is familiar with the fact that the moon changes phases. But what many don't know is that planets…
How Common are Terrestrial, Habitable Planets Around Sun-Like Stars?
[/caption] Once again news from the Kepler mission is making the rounds, this time with a research paper outlining a…
HARPS Hauls in Over Fifty New Exoplanets
[/caption] Yesterday astronomers with the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher or HARPS, announced a record-breaking discovery of more than…
Backyard Science: How You Can Make a Difference
[/caption] It's a great time to be an amateur astronomer! Nowadays, "backyard" astronomers armed with affordable CCD imagers, high-quality tracking mounts, inexpensive…
Lone Planets “More Common Than Stars”
[/caption] We happen to live in a solar system where everything seems to be tucked neatly in place. Sun, planets,…
The Flip Side of Exoplanet Orbits
[/caption] It was once thought that our planet was part of a "typical" solar system. Inner rocky worlds, outlying gas…
Kepler Discovers First Earth Sized Planets inside Habitable Zone
[/caption] With the startling new finding of dozens of Earth-sized extrasolar planets, NASA's Kepler planet hunting space telescope has just…
Kepler Discovers Its Smallest and First Rocky Planet
[/caption] NASA’s Kepler planet hunting space telescope has made an historic discovery by finding its first rocky planet – and…
Catching Planets in the Womb
[/caption]Awhile ago I wrote on the difficulty of finding young planets. There, I mentioned one team announcing the potential discovery…
The Strange Warm Spot of upsilon Andromedae b
[/caption] If you set a big black rock outside in the Sun for a few hours, then go and touch…