Extrasolar Planets News

September 28, 2023

Top Headlines

Study Sheds New Light on Strange Lava Worlds

Sep. 27, 2023 — In a new study, scientists have shown that sweeping molten oceans have a large influence on the observed properties of hot rocky Super-Earths, such as their size and evolutionary ...

New Insights Into the Atmosphere and Star of an Exoplanet

Sep. 25, 2023 — A new study of the intriguing TRAPPIST-1 exoplanetary system has demonstrated the complex interaction between the activity of the system's star and its planetary ...

Water World? Methane, Carbon Dioxide in Atmosphere of Massive Exoplanet

Sep. 11, 2023 — A new investigation with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb's discovery adds to recent studies ...

Hot Jupiter Blows Its Top

Sep. 1, 2023 — The planet HAT-P-32b is losing so much of its atmospheric helium that the trailing gas tails are among the largest structures yet known any planet outside our solar system. Three-dimensional (3D) simulations helped model the flow of the planet's ...

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Scientists Detect and Validate the Longest-Period Exoplanet Found With TESS

Aug. 31, 2023 — Scientists have detected and validated two of the longest-period exoplanets found by TESS to date. These long period large exoplanets orbit a K dwarf star and belong to a class of planets known as ...

New Giant Planet Evidence of Possible Planetary Collisions

Aug. 31, 2023 — A Neptune-sized planet denser than steel has been discovered by an international team of astronomers, who believe its composition could be the result of a giant planetary ...

Hundred-Year Storms? That's How Long They Last on Saturn

Aug. 11, 2023 — Megastorms regularly appear on Saturn, marring the relatively bland surface before disappearing. But radio observations show that the storms have long-lasting effects deeper in the atmosphere, in ...

New Exoplanet Discovery Builds Better Understanding of Planet Formation

Aug. 3, 2023 — An international team of scientists have discovered an unusual Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a low-mass star called TOI-4860, located in the Corvus ...

Hubble Sees Evaporating Planet Getting the Hiccups

July 27, 2023 — A young planet whirling around a petulant red dwarf star is changing in unpredictable ways orbit-by-orbit. It is so close to its parent star that it experiences a consistent, torrential blast of ...

Using Cosmic Weather to Study Which Worlds Could Support Life

July 27, 2023 — As the next generation of giant, high-powered observatories begin to come online, a new study suggests that their instruments may offer scientists an unparalleled opportunity to discern what weather ...

New Planetary Formation Findings

July 26, 2023 — Astronomers have discovered new evidence of how planets as massive as Jupiter can ...

New Image Reveals Secrets of Planet Birth

July 25, 2023 — Astronomers have gained new clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant ...

Webb Detects Water Vapor in Rocky Planet-Forming Zone

July 24, 2023 — Water is essential for life as we know it. However, scientists debate how it reached the Earth and whether the same processes could seed rocky exoplanets orbiting distant stars. New insights may come ...

Does This Exoplanet Have a Sibling Sharing the Same Orbit?

July 19, 2023 — Astronomers have found the possible 'sibling' of a planet orbiting a distant star. The team has detected a cloud of debris that might be sharing this planet's orbit and which, they believe, could be ...

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Summaries
Headlines

Rare, Double-Lobe Nebula Resembles Overflowing Cosmic 'Jug'

July 13, 2023 — A billowing pair of nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas mark the death throes of an ancient red-giant star. The resulting structure, said to resemble an old style of English jug, is a rarely ...

Life After Death: Astronomers Find a Planet That Shouldn't Exist

June 28, 2023 — The star would have inflated up to 1.5 times the planet's orbital distance -- engulfing the planet in the process -- before shrinking to its current size at only one-tenth of that ...

ALMA Digs Deeper Into the Mystery of Planet Formation

June 28, 2023 — An international research team has observed disks around 19 protostars with a very high resolution to search for the earliest signs of planet formation. This survey was motivated by the recent ...

A Surprise Chemical Find by ALMA May Help Detect and Confirm Protoplanets

June 27, 2023 — Scientists studying the protoplanetary disk around a young star have discovered the most compelling chemical evidence to date of the formation of protoplanets. The discovery will provide astronomers ...

Exoplanet May Reveal Secrets About the Edge of Habitability

June 21, 2023 — How close can a rocky planet be to a star, and still sustain water and life? A recently discovered exoplanet may be key to solving that ...

Earth Was Created Much Faster Than We Thought: This Makes the Chance of Finding Other Habitable Planets in the Universe More Likely

June 14, 2023 — Over the past decades, researchers thought Earth was created over a period of more than 100 million years. However, a new study from suggests that the creation of Earth was much more rapid, and that ...

A Scorching-Hot Exoplanet Scrutinized by Astronomers

June 14, 2023 — Through the Gemini-North Telescope in Hawai'i, the chemical composition of WASP-76 b is revealed in unprecedented detail, giving new insights also into the composition of giant ...

Flaring Star Could Be Down to Young Planet's Disc Inferno

June 12, 2023 — New simulations offer new explanation for star's 85-year flare. In this scenario, a young giant planet is burning up very close to its star, suggesting solar systems may have hosted many of such ...

A New Tatooine-Like Multi-Planetary System Identified

June 12, 2023 — An international team of astronomers has announced the second-ever discovery of a multiplanetary circumbinary ...

Elusive Planets Play 'Hide and Seek' With CHEOPS

June 8, 2023 — Astronomers have clearly identified the existence of four new exoplanets. The four mini-Neptunes are smaller and cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called Hot Jupiter exoplanets which ...

'Hot Jupiters' May Not Be Orbiting Alone

June 8, 2023 — Astronomers challenge longstanding beliefs about the isolation of 'hot Jupiters' and proposes a new mechanism for understanding the exoplanets' ...

NIRISS Instrument on Webb Maps an Ultra-Hot Jupiter's Atmosphere

May 31, 2023 — There's an intriguing exoplanet out there -- 400 light-years out there -- that is so tantalizing that astronomers have been studying it since its discovery in 2009. One orbit for WASP-18 b ...

Astronomers Discover Last Three Planets Kepler Telescope Observed Before Going Dark

May 30, 2023 — With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers discovered what may be the last three planets that the Kepler Space Telescope saw before it was ...

One-Third of Galaxy's Most Common Planets Could Be in Habitable Zone

May 29, 2023 — A third of the exoplanets orbiting common M dwarf stars have gentle enough orbits to potentially be in the habitable zone capable of hosting liquid ...

The Search for Habitable Planets Expands

May 25, 2023 — Astronomers are suggesting a new way to expand the search for habitable planets that takes into account a zone not previously considered: the space between the star and what's called soot-line ...

Astronomers Discover a Key Planetary System to Understand the Formation Mechanism of the Mysterious 'Super-Earths'

May 25, 2023 — A study presents the detection of a system of two planets slightly larger than Earth orbiting a cold star in a synchronized dance. Named TOI-2096, the system is located 150 light-years from Earth. ...

NASA's Spitzer, TESS Find Potentially Volcano-Covered Earth-Size World

May 17, 2023 — Astronomers have discovered an Earth-size exoplanet, or world beyond our solar system, that may be carpeted with volcanoes. Called LP 791-18 d, the planet could undergo volcanic outbursts as often as ...

Astronomers Observe the First Radiation Belt Seen Outside of Our Solar System

May 15, 2023 — Astronomers have described the first radiation belt observed outside our solar system, using a coordinated array of 39 radio dishes from Hawaii to Germany to obtain high-resolution images. The images ...

Researchers Measure the Light Emitted by a Sub-Neptune Planet's Atmosphere

May 10, 2023 — Researchers observed exoplanet GJ 1214b's atmosphere by measuring the heat it emits while orbiting its host star. Astronomers directly detected the light emitted by a sub-Neptune exoplanet -- a ...

Hubble Follows Shadow Play Around Planet-Forming Disk

May 4, 2023 — The young star TW Hydrae is playing 'shadow puppets' with scientists observing it with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. In 2017, astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across ...

Thursday, July 13, 2023