Laboratory News

The Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system to identify molecules in their atmospheres. The landmark achievement is a significant step toward being able to detect possible life on rocky exoplanets and comes years before astronomers had anticipated.
  + Read the NASA press release featuring work done by Jeremy Richardson

Nature: The magazine cover features New Worlds Discoverer and Chrisopher Stark's model

Science: Exotic Earths: Forming Habitable Worlds with Giant Planet Migration by Sean N. Raymond, Avi M. Mandell, Steinn Sigurdsson

Nature: Stabilization of the disk around β Pictoris by extremely carbon-rich gas by Aki Robarge, et al.

Scientists have found that a nearby two-star system contains a precursor to a Type Ia supernova, an important class of star explosions used to measure the expansion rate of the universe. The observations may help scientists understand how Type Ia supernovae work.
  + Read the NASA press release featuring work done by Richard Barry

The debris ring around Fomalhaut imaged with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the Hubble Space Telescope. (NASA, ESA, P. Kalas and J. Graham, University of California, Berkeley, and M. Clampin, Goddard Space Flight Center).

Artist's concept of the two Terrestrial Planet Finder Missions, designed to search for Earth-like planets around nearby stars.

Globular Cluster M2 imaged with GALEX.

Secondary Eclipse of Transiting Planet HD 209458b measured with IRAC. Press Release (NASA, D. Deming, Goddard Space Flight Center)

ExoPlanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory