February 13, 2013
Moonstruck
As one of the first astronomers to seriously hunt for moons that orbit exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars beyond our sun, David Kipping has taken on an unusually challenging task.
› read moreFebruary 13, 2013
As one of the first astronomers to seriously hunt for moons that orbit exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars beyond our sun, David Kipping has taken on an unusually challenging task.
› read moreFebruary 06, 2013
Kepler finds that nearby red dwarf stars may have Earth-size exoplanets.
› read moreFebruary 01, 2013
Astronomers with the Subaru telescope in Hawaii have unraveled the mystery of a backwards-orbiting planet.
› read moreJanuary 09, 2013
Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds.
› read moreJanuary 08, 2013
Planet Hunters participants find a gas giant and 42 confirmed planets in Kepler data.
› read moreJanuary 07, 2013
NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet.
› read moreJanuary 07, 2013
Kepler's groundbreaking mission has been supported with an array of ground and space-based follow-up projects.
› read moreJanuary 04, 2013
NExScI Executive Director Charles Beichman talks about exoplanets with KPCC's David Lazarus.
› read moreJanuary 03, 2013
New study confirms the galaxy is chock-full of other worlds.
› read moreNovember 19, 2012
Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a "super-Jupiter" around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion.
› read moreNovember 15, 2012
Astronomers have snapped a picture of what is very likely to be a free-floating orphan exoplanet.
› read moreNovember 01, 2012
New study finds that asteroid belts of the right size and density may be key to creating habitable exoplanets.
› read moreOctober 26, 2012
PlanetQuest talks with Olivier Guyon about what it feels like to get the "genius" phone call and what he plans to do with the award.
› read moreOctober 16, 2012
Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting the star closest to our own.
› read moreOctober 15, 2012
The discovery of planets continues to expand beyond the domain of professional astronomers. A joint effort of amateur astronomers and scientists has led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double star that, in turn, is orbited by a second distant pair of stars.
› read moreOctober 11, 2012
JPL scientist Olivier Guyon has been named one of the 2012 MacArthur Fellows, a prestigious award popularly known as the “genius grant.”
› read moreSeptember 28, 2012
A new study finds that "super-Earths" may lack a magnetic field, which could make them difficult places for life to survive.
› read moreSeptember 28, 2012
Scientists theorize that radiation-pummeled pulsar planets may be bathed in an "electromagnetic wake".
› read moreSeptember 14, 2012
NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments.
› read moreSeptember 11, 2012
While the hunt continues for the elusive Earth-like 'blue dot,' astronomers have discovered a collection of odd exoplanets.
› read moreSeptember 06, 2012
Exoplanet hunter John Johnson is spearheading a grassroots effort to build a lean, mean, Earth-hunting telescope in the hills of Southern California.
› read moreAugust 28, 2012
Kepler has found the first multiple-planet solar system orbiting a pair of stars, revealing a brand new kind of solar system.
› read moreAugust 27, 2012
Astronomers have discovered evidence of a planet that's been consumed by its "red giant" star. This event could mirror the fate of planets like Earth when our sun expands into its red giant phase.
› read moreAugust 08, 2012
A group of astronomers including John Johnson of Caltech has found that data from Kepler may show that Jupiter-size planets might not be as easy to come by as smaller, rocky worlds like Earth.
› read moreJune 21, 2012
Astronomers have discovered a pair of neighboring planets with dissimilar densities orbiting very close to each other.
› read moreMay 08, 2012
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time.
› read moreApril 04, 2012
NASA's Kepler mission has been approved for extension through fiscal year 2016 based on a recommendation from the Agency’s Senior Review of its operating missions.
› read moreMarch 29, 2012
A new result from ESO’s HARPS planet finder shows that rocky planets not much bigger than Earth are very common in the habitable zones around faint red stars. The international team estimates that there are tens of billions of such planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and probably about one hundred in the Sun’s immediate neighbourhood.
› read moreFebruary 21, 2012
Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It's smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.
› read moreFebruary 02, 2012
A newly-discovered super-Earth in a triple-star system could potentially be an Earth-like planet.
› read moreJanuary 11, 2012
Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun.
› read moreJanuary 11, 2012
Our Milky Way galaxy contains, on average, a minimum of one planet for every star, according to a new statistical study.
› read moreJanuary 01, 2012
2011 showed NASA's Kepler mission finding its stride. 2012 could be even bigger.
› 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
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 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 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.
› read moreDecember 08, 2010
Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with previously published ground-based observations.
› read moreDecember 06, 2010
The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer has taken its first images of the star Beta Peg in the constellation Pegasus -- an encouraging start for an instrument designed to probe the cosmic neighborhoods where Earth-like planets could exist.
› read moreDecember 01, 2010
A team of astronomers, including two NASA Sagan Fellows, has made the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere, by using a ground-based telescope.
› read moreNovember 18, 2010
Over the last 15 years, astronomers have detected nearly 500 exoplanets orbiting ordinary stars in our cosmic neighborhood. Now, for the first time, astronomers have detected an exoplanet whose origin appears to lie outside our own galaxy.
› read moreNovember 02, 2010
Earth is invitingly blue. Mars is angry red. Venus is brilliant white. Astronomers have learned that a planet's "true colors" can reveal important details.
› read moreOctober 29, 2010
With new evidence suggesting that the galaxy could be full of habitable planets like ours, the universe may be a more friendly place than anyone might have imagined. However, not every planet is lucky enough to have the right conditions for life. Here are some examples of how things can go very wrong.
› read moreOctober 28, 2010
Nearly one in four stars similar to the sun may host planets as small as Earth, according to a new study funded by NASA and the University of California.
› read moreOctober 25, 2010
Just how similar to Earth is the newly discovered planet orbiting the star Gliese 581? Until astronomers can take a closer look with a space-based exoplanet mission, that answer is likely to remain a mystery, NASA experts said.
› read moreOctober 19, 2010
Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.
› read moreDecember 04, 2008
As an avid fly fisherman and geocaching enthusiast, Robert Peters is a natural hunter, which makes him the perfect person to work on technology to help find Earthlike planets.
› read moreOctober 03, 2008
It's fitting that Sara Seager is fascinated by stories of explorers visiting uncharted places. From her groundbreaking work on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to her innovative theories about life on other worlds, Seager has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanet
› read moreApril 17, 2008
Webster Cash's passion for space began when he saw his first planetarium show as a child. Now, as the principal investigator for one of NASA's future exoplanet mission proposals, Cash is on the cutting edge of ideas that could help change our perception of the universe.
› read moreDecember 17, 2007
You could say that science runs in Rachel Akeson's family. The daughter of two scientists, she knew she was going to be an astronomer by the time she was a third-grader. Now, in addition to having her hands full with her own young children, Akeson is studying young stars as they develop their own planetary families.
› read moreJuly 18, 2007
"I just do it for the pictures," laughs Dr. David Imel as he points to the myriad posters of stars and galaxies hanging from the walls in his office at Caltech. But the picture Imel wants to see most doesn't exist yet - a pale blue dot orbiting a distant star. Another Earth.
› read moreFebruary 05, 2007
Beth A. Biller overcame her fear of math to pursue her career as a serious astronomer. Her research has helped produce some of the sharpest images of extrasolar worlds ever obtained.
› read moreOctober 11, 2006
Where are the other Earths? Answering that question is just the first step in NASA's long-range quest to look for life around stars beyond our solar system, according to Dr. Wes Traub. And to answer it, he says, we have to go into space.
› read moreDecember 16, 2005
Robert Ligon is an engineer, not an astronaut. Nonetheless, his work takes place on an otherworldly landscape miles above the Earth, where the air is thin and clear. He is part of a team that is pushing the technology envelope to aid in NASA's search for new worlds.
› read moreJanuary 19, 2005
JPL physicist Ken Brown aims high. Twice named All-American in track and field, he placed 12th in the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trails qualifier in high jump. Now, he has his sights set on even loftier goals - building an instrument to spot hard-to-see planets outside our solar system and inspiring students to join in the quest.
› read moreSeptember 22, 2004
Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the world's most popular lecturers on astronomy, talks about the PBS "Origins" series, public perceptions of science, and the childhood influences that led him to become a scientist and an ambassador to the cosmos.
› read moreApril 07, 2003
Astronomers have been discovering large planets around other stars by the dozen in recent years, but are there really any other places that look like Earth out there? In a recent interview, planet-hunter extraordinaire Geoff Marcy said the answer may be closer than you think.
› read moreApril 01, 2002
The detection of small, Earth-like worlds outside our solar system may be closer than you think, according to Caltech's David Charbonneau.
› read more