December 20, 2011
Sisters in size
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system.
› read moreDecember 20, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system.
› read moreDecember 05, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count.
› read moreOctober 20, 2011
Using data from the Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time cold water vapor enveloping a dusty disk around a young star.
› read moreOctober 19, 2011
Keck astronomers have captured the first direct image of a planet forming around its host star.
› read moreJuly 14, 2011
An international team, including Oxford University scientists, has discovered ten new planets. Amongst them is one orbiting a star perhaps only a few tens of million years old, twin Neptune-sized planets, and a rare Saturn-like world.
› read moreMay 27, 2011
Exoplanet CubeSat set to hitch a ride into space in 2012.
› read moreMay 18, 2011
So-called 'rogue planets' could litter the galaxy.
› read moreMay 10, 2011
An international team of astronomers today revealed details of a 'super-exotic' exoplanet that would make the planet Pandora in the movie Avatar pale in comparison.
› read moreApril 07, 2011
Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars could very well be home to the easiest-to-see alien planets.
› read moreMarch 29, 2011
NASA has selected five potential discoverers as the recipients of the 2011 Carl Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowships, named after the late astronomer. The Carl Sagan Fellowship takes a theme-based approach, in which fellows will focus on compelling scientific questions, such as "Are there Earth-like planets orbiting other stars?"
› read moreMarch 28, 2011
Kepler's big annoucement of over 1,000 exoplanet candidates in early February continues to reverberate in the astronomy world. Here are some other news stories that are heating things up in the realm of exoplanets.
› read moreMarch 07, 2011
Kepler's latest data release included the discovery of an exotic six-planet solar system and five Earth-size worlds, but the bigger story may be in the hundreds of new "candidate planets" that were announced.
› read moreFebruary 17, 2011
The fruits of the SEEDS (Strategic Explorations of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru) Project, led by Motohide Tamura at NAOJ (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan), are accumulating.
› read moreFebruary 02, 2011
Scientists using NASA's Kepler, a space telescope, recently discovered six planets made of a mix of rock and gases orbiting a single sun-like star, known as Kepler-11, which is located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth.
› read moreFebruary 02, 2011
Is our Milky Way galaxy home to other planets the size of Earth? Are Earth-sized planets common or rare? NASA scientists seeking answers to those questions recently revealed their discovery.
› read moreJanuary 12, 2011
NASA's Kepler mission confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10b. Measuring 1.4 times the size of Earth, it is the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.
› read moreJanuary 12, 2011
A research team led by astronomers from the University of Tokyo and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) has discovered that inclined orbits may be typical rather than rare for exoplanetary systems -- those outside of our solar system.
› read moreJanuary 02, 2011
A big year for exoplanet exploration came to a fitting end in December when astronomers announced new exoplanet discoveries that brought the total number of known worlds outside our solar system to over 500.
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