Exoplanets
5,000 Exoplanets!
Before NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission launched in 2018, astronomers tried to understand what it would find in…
ESA’s ARIEL Mission Will Study the Atmospheres of More Than 1,000 Exoplanets
We found our first exoplanets orbiting a pulsar in 1992. Since then, we've discovered many thousands more. Those were the…
Extreme Tidal Forces Have Deformed an Exoplanet
What an exoplanet shaped like a rugby ball tells us about its composition.
These Newly-Discovered Planets are Doomed
Astronomers have spied three more exoplanets. But the discovery might not last long. Each planet is in a separate solar…
Forget That Planet That Orbits Every 16 Hours. That’s so Last Week. Now Astronomers Have Found a Metal Planet That Orbits its Star EVERY 8 HOURS
Astronomers have found a small, hot planet that might be almost solid iron.
Life on Earth Needed Iron. Will it be the Same on Other Worlds?
A lot has to go right for a planet to support life. Some of the circumstances that allow life to…
Even Really Massive Stars Seem to Have Planets
Can planets form around massive, hot stars? Some astronomers think they can't. According to the evidence, planets around stars exceeding…
TESS Finds a New Mars-Sized Planet (With the Density of Mercury)
Some planets orbit their stars so closely that they have extremely high surface temperatures and extremely rapid orbits. Most of…
A Machine-Learning Algorithm Just Found 301 Additional Planets in Kepler Data
Using a new type of deep-learning algorithm, a team of NASA scientists have detected 301 more exoplanets in the Kepler…
Astronomers Find a Planet That Orbits its Star in Just 16 HOURS!
Mercury is the speed champion in our Solar System. It orbits the Sun every 88 days, and its average speed…