Tag: Exoplanets

This hellish exoplanet’s skies rain iron and create a rainbow-like effect

NeRD

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…

Read More

1 in 12 stars might have swallowed a planet

NeRD

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…

Read More

More Planets than Stars: Kepler’s Legacy

NeRD

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The Kepler mission enabled the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, revealing a deep truth about our place in the cosmos: there are more planets than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The road to this fundamental change in our understanding of the universe, however, required almost 20 years of persistence before the mission became a reality with its selection in 2001. The Kepler spacecraft at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado. The Kepler mission surveyed a region…

Read More

Discovery Alert: Glowing Cloud Points to a Cosmic Collision

NeRD

3 min read Discovery Alert: Glowing Cloud Points to a Cosmic Collision This illustration depicts the aftermath of a collision between two giant exoplanets. What remains is a hot, molten planetary core and a swirling, glowing cloud of dust and debris. Mark A. Garlick The Discovery:  A glowing cosmic cloud has revealed a cataclysmic collision. Key Facts: Even within our own solar system, scientists have seen evidence of giant, planetary collisions from long ago. Remaining clues like Uranus’ tilt and the existence of Earth’s moon point to times in our…

Read More

NASA exoplanet telescope discovers ‘super-Earth’ in its star’s Goldilocks zone

NeRD

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…

Read More

Earth isn’t the only planet with seasons, but they can look wildly different on other worlds

NeRD

Spring, summer, fall and winter – the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It’s easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. So why does Earth have regular seasons when other planets don’t? I’m an astrophysicist who studies the movement of planets and the causes of seasons. Throughout my research, I’ve found that Earth’s regular pattern of seasons is unique. The rotational axis that Earth spins on, along the North and South poles, isn’t…

Read More

Are they exomoons or not? Scientists debate existence of 1st moons seen beyond our solar system

NeRD

Astronomers always knew spotting moons around planets outside the solar system would be no mean feat — but a debate currently raging in planetary science circles shows just how tough detecting these so-called exomoons is going to be.  The story begins in 2018, when astronomers including David Kipping, an assistant professor of astronomy at Columbia University, believed they’d made their first detection of an exomoon. The subject was found around exoplanet Kepler-1625b, a Jupiter-like world located around 8,000 light years from Earth. It was initially spotted with the Kepler Space…

Read More

NASA’s Hubble Finds Water Vapor in Small Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

NeRD

5 min read NASA’s Hubble Finds Water Vapor in Small Exoplanet’s Atmosphere This is an artist’s concept of the exoplanet GJ 9827d, the smallest exoplanet where water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere. The planet could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy. With only about twice Earth’s diameter, the planet orbits the red dwarf star GJ 9827. Two inner planets in the system are on the left. The background stars are plotted as they would be seen to the unaided eye looking…

Read More

This huge exoplanet’s comet-like tail is 350,000 miles long and scientists are thrilled

NeRD

A comet-like planet beyond our solar system is losing a lot more atmosphere in its vast tail than previously thought, intriguing astronomers and sparking new questions about how planets evolve with their parent stars. The exoplanet WASP-69b, a hot, puffy gas giant 160 light-years from Earth that circles its host star in a speedy 3.9 days, first rose to fame in 2018 when astronomers found a possible comet-like tail of gas leaking from the planet’s atmosphere. That tail, which was thought to be just a tiny trail of helium particles,…

Read More

NASA Features New Discoveries at American Astronomical Society Meeting

NeRD

5 min read NASA Features New Discoveries at American Astronomical Society Meeting A cluster of young stars – about one to two million years old – located about 20,000 light years from Earth. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/Sejong Univ./Hur et al; Optical: NASA/STScI Experts will discuss new research from NASA missions at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), on topics ranging from planets outside our solar system to fleeting, high-energy explosions in the universe. The meeting will take place Jan. 7-11 at the New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center…

Read More