Tag: Exoplanets

New simulations that describe how moons, including Earth‘s own moon, formed strongly imply that exomoons are more likely to be found around rocky exoplanets. Our moon is thought to have formed when a Mars-size planetesimal called Theia slammed into Earth, gouging out a huge wound in our planet and rendering its entire surface molten. It’s believed that the moon then coalesced from debris that settled into a ring around our planet. Those are the generally accepted details, but the specifics are still hotly debated. The angle and velocity with which…

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The search for life beyond Earth dutifully continues. Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, as well as the European Space Agency‘s XMM-Newton, are contributing some new research to the hunt — and hoping to lay the groundwork for future projects. The researchers are using Chandra to study radiation emitted from nearby stars to establish whether or not an exoplanet orbiting those stars could be habitable. X-rays and ultraviolet light could, at high-enough levels, damage an exoplanet’s atmosphere, reducing the possibility of supporting life (as we know it, anyway). “Without characterizing X-rays…

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A ‘hot Neptune’ exoplanet has been found to contain sulfur dioxide in its atmosphere — an atmosphere that’s also gushing into space as the planet loops over its star’s poles on a steeply inclined orbit every three-and-a-third days. The existence of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of the exoplanet, dubbed GJ 3470b and located 96 light-years from Earth, came as a shock when it was spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “We didn’t think we’d see sulfur dioxide on planets this small, and it’s exciting to see this…

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There are many words that could be used to describe WASP-76b — hellish, scorching, turbulent, chaotic, and even violent. This is a planet outside the solar system that sits so close to its star it gets hot enough to vaporize lead. So, as you can imagine, until now, “glorious” wasn’t one of those words. This more positive descriptor was added to the list quite recently, as astronomers have detected hints of something called “glory” in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet. The glory effect, hinted at in data from…

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About one in every 12 stars may have swallowed a planet, a new study finds. Previous research had discovered that some distant stars possess unusual levels of elements, such as iron, which one would expect to make up rocky worlds such as Earth. This and other evidence suggested that stars may sometimes ingest planets, but much remained uncertain about how often that might happen. One way to uncover more about planetary ingestion is to look at two stars born at the same time. Such twins should have a virtually identical…

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NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has spotted a ‘super-Earth’ planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a relatively nearby red dwarf star. The extrasolar planet or ‘exoplanet,’ which has been designated TOI-715 b, might have company in the form of an Earth-sized planet.  The discovery is significant because red dwarfs, which are smaller and cooler than the sun, are often suggested to be the stars most likely to host small rocky habitable planets. According to a NASA statement, TOI-715 b has a width around 1.5 times that of Earth…

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