Extrasolar Planets | Universe Today

In what might be a evidence of planetary billiards, astronomers have found an exoplanet with an extremely odd orbit. The question is, was this planet the cue ball or the object ball? While most planets orbit around a star's mid-section, this one – called XO-3b — is tilted about 37 degrees from the star's equator. It's also a massive planet, about 10 times the size of Jupiter. Such a misalignment must have occurred as a result of a disturbance, such as a collision with another object, sometime after the planet's formation. But astronomers say they don't yet know what caused the unusual orbit of XO-3b.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 1 Comment »

Most scientists predict that in about a billion years, the sun's ever-increasing radiation will have scorched the Earth beyond habitability. The breathable air will be toast, the carbon dioxide that serves as food for plant life will disappear, the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear. Or maybe not. A group of researchers from Caltech have studied a mechanism which would cause any planet with living organisms to remain habitable longer than originally thought, perhaps doubling the lifespan. This sounds like good news for future inhabitants of Earth, but also, this mechanism could increase the chance that life elsewhere in the Universe might have the time to progress to advanced levels.
Read more…

Filed under: Earth, Extrasolar Planets | 5 Comments »

In order to support life, an exoplanet should simply hang out where heat from its star is just right for liquid water. Right?

Not necessarily. New research is suggesting that in order to support life, such a planet might also need plate tectonics, and those are triggered in a narrower band of distance from the parent star.

Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Extrasolar Planets | 10 Comments »

Science fiction is lousy with examples of planets that orbit a system of two suns. Tatooine, in the Star Wars saga, is endowed with a pair of suns to light up the sky, as is the planet Magrathea in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It would indeed be quite a spectacle to wake up to more than one Sun every day for us who have only one. This sight may entirely be possible to view around the young binary star system V4046 Sagittarii, as new images from the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) have confirmed the existence of a molecular cloud – which could harbor, or later produce planets -  orbiting the twin stars. This is the first time that evidence of planetary formation around a binary system of stars has been uncovered.

Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets, Planetary Formation | 12 Comments »

Using a technique called Pixel-lensing, a group of astronomers in Italy may have detected a planet orbiting another star. But this planet is unique among the 300-plus exoplanets discovered so far, as it and its parent star are in another galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy, to be exact. Technically, the star in M31 was found to have a companion about 6 times the mass of Jupiter, so it could be either a brown dwarf or a planet. But either way, this is a remarkable feat, to find an object of that size in another galaxy.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets, Gravitational Lensing | 4 Comments »

Using the method of astrometry to find planets orbiting other stars has been around for 50 years, and until now it hasn't bagged a single exoplanet. But finally, astronomers found a Jupiter-sized planet , called VB 10b, using this method. Astrometry is difficult and requires very precise measurements over long periods of time. So why did they keep trying for so long? "This method is optimal for finding solar-system configurations like ours that might harbor other Earths," said astronomer Steven Pravdo of JPL. "We found a Jupiter-like planet at around the same relative place as our Jupiter, only around a much smaller star. It's possible this star also has inner rocky planets. And since more than seven out of 10 stars are small like this one, this could mean planets are more common than we thought."
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 2 Comments »

By looking back at Earth from alien's point of view, scientists have developed a new technique to look for other worlds that might harbor oceans, and therefore life. Using the old Deep Impact spacecraft, which is now being used for the EPOXI mission, scientists are able to look at the spectrum of an extrasolar planet's light which would reveal the presence of water. "We used the High Resolution Imager telescope on Deep Impact to look at Earth from tens of millions of miles away," said Nicolas B. Cowan, of the University of Washington, " and developed a method to indicate the presence of oceans by analyzing how Earth's light changes as the planet rotates. This method can be used to identify extrasolar ocean-bearing Earths."
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 4 Comments »

The checkout and calibration phase for the Kepler spacecraft has been completed, and now the telescope will begin one of the longest and most important stare-downs ever attempted. Kepler will spend the next three-and-a-half years staring at more than 100,000 stars searching for telltale signs of planets. Kepler should have the ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans. "Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator for the mission. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 7 Comments »

A new era on astronomy began in 1995 when the first extrasolar planet was detected. To date, 346 planets have been found orbiting stars other than our sun. But new research indicates astronomers might have found even more extrasolar planets except for one thing: some planets have either been pulled into their parent star and devoured or gravitationally torn apart. .And astronomers say the most Earth-like planet detected so far, CoRoT-7 B will inevitably be destroyed by the star it orbits.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 1 Comment »

Astronomers are announcing a newly discovered exoplanet in the habitable zone of its star, and another one — in the same system — that's just twice the size of Earth.

The Gliese 581 planetary system now has four known planets, with masses of about 1.9 (planet e, left in the foreground), 16 (planet b, nearest to the star), 5 (planet c, center), and 7 Earth-masses (planet d, with the bluish colour).

Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Extrasolar Planets | 19 Comments »

Were there once habitable planets long ago around stars that are now dead? A team of astronomers have found evidence that between 1-3 percent of white dwarf stars are orbited by rocky planets and asteroids, suggesting these objects once hosted solar systems similar to our own. White dwarf stars are the compact, hot remnants left behind when stars like our Sun reach the end of their lives. Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers have determined that asteroids are found in orbit around a large number of white dwarfs, perhaps as many as 5 million in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets, Spitzer | 21 Comments »

W00t! Kepler has seen first light! The spacecraft has taken its first images of the star-rich sky where it will soon begin hunting for planets like Earth. These first images show the mission's target patch of sky, a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our Milky Way galaxy. One image shows millions of stars in Kepler's full field of view, while two others zoom in on portions of the larger region. "Kepler's first glimpse of the sky is awe-inspiring," said Lia LaPiana, Kepler's program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "To be able to see millions of stars in a single snapshot is simply breathtaking."

The image above zooms into a small portion — just 0.2 percent –of Kepler's full field of view, and shows an an expansive, 100-square-degree patch of sky in our Milky Way galaxy, and a cluster of stars located about 13,000 light-years from Earth, called NGC 6791, can be seen in the upper right corner. These images were taken on April 8, 2009, one day after Kepler's dust cover was jettisoned. See more below.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets, Missions | 41 Comments »

On April 7th, commands were sent to NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope to eject the 1.3×1.7 metre lens cap so the unprecedented mission could begin its hunt for Earth-like alien worlds orbiting distant stars. However, one UK astronomer won't be using the Kepler data to detect the faint transits of rocky exoplanets in front of their host stars. He'll be using it to monitor the light from a special class of variable star, and through the extreme precision of Kepler's optics he will be joining an international team of collaborators to redefine the size of the Universe…
Read more…

Filed under: Cosmology, Extrasolar Planets | 28 Comments »

Engineers successfully ejected the dust cover from NASA's Kepler telescope last night and the space observatory will soon begin searching for Earth-like planets. "The cover released and flew away exactly as we designed it to do," said Kepler Project Manager James Fanson from JPL. "This is a critical step toward answering a question that has come down to us across 100 generations of human history — are there other planets like Earth, or are we alone in the galaxy?"

Click here for an animation of the event.
Read more…

Filed under: Extrasolar Planets | 25 Comments »

An Australian doctoral researcher using a backyard telescope has made a potentially big discovery: Earth's oceans and continents shine differently on the dark side of the moon.

Now, Sally Langford, a doctoral candidate in physics at the University of Melbourne, is suggesting the "earthshine" of planets around other stars could provide long-distance windows into their surface features.

Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Extrasolar Planets, Moon | 25 Comments »