exoplanets
Rocky Planets Orbiting White Dwarf Stars Could be the Perfect Places to Search for Life
Some very powerful telescopes will see first light in the near future. One of them is the long-awaited James Webb…
Astronomers Find a Six-Planet System Which Orbit in Lockstep With Each Other
Astronomers have found a star system with six exoplanets that orbit with an almost perfect 3:2 resonance.
How Did the TRAPPIST-1 Planets Get Their Water?
A new study by an international team of astronomers raises questions about the existence of debris belts around red dwarf…
WFIRST Will Use Relativity to Find More Exoplanets!
When it deploys in 2025, NASA's WFIRST mission will rely on the gravitational microlensing technique to locate exoplanets near the…
Astronomers Watched a Star System Die
About 570 light years from Earth lies WD 1145+017, a white dwarf star. In many respects it's a typical white…
Five Snapshots of how the Earth Looked at Key Points in its History Could Help us Find Habitable Exoplanets
A study by Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute provides models of how Earth looked like over time, which could help us…
How Will Clouds Obscure the View of Exoplanet Surfaces?
A new study shows how the presence of a cloud layer could make it harder for the James Webb Space…
Your Umbrella is Insufficient on a Planet Where it Rains Iron
Imagine a planet where it rained iron. Sounds impossible. But on one distant exoplanet, which is tidally locked to its…
Gas and Dust Stop Planets From Eating Their Moons
A team of Japanese researchers have created a new model for moon formation that explains how planets like Saturn end…
WFIRST Passes an Important Milestone, it’s Time to Begin Development and Testing
Soon, astronomers and astrophysicists will have more observing power than they know what to do with. Not only will the…