Extrasolar Planets
Podcast: Planetary Disk That Refuses to Grow Up
With new instruments, astronomers are filling in all the pieces that help to explain how planets form out of extended…
Oldest Planetary Disk Discovered
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found a dusty disk around a star which is 25 million years…
Planet Found in Triple Star System
A backdrop in many science fiction stories is to have multiple suns in the sky. Astronomers have now found such…
Will We Find Super Earths?
As techniques and equipment for finding extrasolar planets improve, astronomers are finding planets with smaller masses. First it was Jupiter-sized…
Transit Method Turns Up Planets
Of the 130 extrasolar planets discovered to date, most have been found using the radial velocity method, where a planet…
Largest Core in an Extrasolar Planet
Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet that contains the largest core ever seen in a planet. This planet orbits the…
Extrasolar Planet Reshapes Ring Around a Star
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken a detailed image of a narrow, dusty ring around nearby star Fomalhaut. Although they…
Just How Earthlike is this New Planet?
When the recent discovery of a planet orbiting Gliese 876 was announced by astronomers, much of the interest focused on…
Large Rocky Planet Discovered
Astronomers have found the most Earthlike extrasolar planet discovered so far. This new planet is about 7.5 times the mass…
Podcast: Amateurs Help Find a Planet
Professional astronomers have got some powerful equipment at their disposal: Hubble, Keck, and Spitzer, just to name a few. But…