Exoplanets
Earth-Sized Planet Found At One of the Lightest Red Dwarfs
Astronomers have found another Earth-sized planet. It's about 31 light-years away and orbits in the habitable zone of a red…
How Can We Know if We’re Looking at Habitable exo-Earths or Hellish exo-Venuses?
The differences between Earth and Venus are obvious to us. One is radiant with life and adorned with glittering seas,…
Watch This 12-Year Timelapse of Exoplanets Orbiting Their Star
Back in 2008, astronomers made a big announcement: for the first time, they had taken pictures of a multi-planet solar…
It’s Already Hard Enough to Block a Single Star’s Light to See its Planets. But Binary Stars? Yikes
Detecting exoplanets was frontier science not long ago. But now we've found over 5,000 of them, and we expect to…
Could Next-Generation Telescopes See That Earth Has Life?
While the Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the Sun, a lot of it is reflected back into space.…
By Blocking the Light From a Star, Webb Reveals the Dusty Disk Surrounding It
AU Microscopii is a small red dwarf star about 32 light-years away. It's far too dim for the unaided human…
Worlds Bustling With Plantlife Should Shine in a Detectable Wavelength of Infrared
Future historians might look back on this time and call it the 'exoplanet age.' We've found over 5,000 exoplanets, and…
TESS has Found A Second Earth-Sized World in This System. Exoplanet Science is Maturing
For planet-hunters, finding an Earth-sized exoplanet must be special. NASA estimates there are about 100 billion planets in the Milky…
The Webb Has Confirmed its First Exoplanet, and it’s the Same Size as Earth.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. That power has led to a…
Giant Exoplanet is Spiraling Inward to its Doom
"Death by star" is a fate awaiting most planets in star systems. That includes our Sun, Venus, and Mercury a…