Exoplanet

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced its exoplanet-hunting HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) has discovered 50 new exoplanets, making it the largest amount of exoplanets that has been announced at the one time. Bringing the number of planets discovered outside our solar system to 645, the 50-planet haul includes 16 super-Earths (planets with a mass between one and ten times that of Earth), including one that orbits at the edge of the habitable zone of its star.  Read More

NASA's Kepler space telescope has succeeded in its mission to identify potentially-habitable exoplanets. Kepler has so far observed 156,000 stars in its field of vision and has identified no less than 1235 candidate planets that sit in the “goldilocks zone” (not too close to the star, and not too far away). Of these, scientists at the NASA's Ames Research Center are excited to announce the discovery of the Kepler-11 system – a rare multiple planetary system similar to our own with five planets in the habitable zone.  Read More

Astronomers have been discovering planets outside of our solar system – or exoplanets – at a steady rate in recent years. The number has now topped 500 and with earth-bound detection improving all the time and the Kepler mission out hunting with the largest camera ever sent into space, the rate is not likely to slow down anytime soon. Among these discoveries are some extraordinary finds like the first "potentially habitable" exoplanet, but what's different about this latest discovery is not the Earth-like qualities of the planet, it's the fact that it originated from outside the Milky Way – which makes it an extragalactic exoplanet.  Read More

Astronomers at the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have just completed an intensive five year survey of the heavens, looking at planets orbiting 166 sun-like stars within 80 light years of our own solar system. Contrary to popular theory, the study has found that the majority of planets in close orbit to their stars are some three to ten times the size of our Earth and not, as previously thought, giants with three times the mass of Jupiter. The study has also led the researchers to speculate that there could be billions of as-yet-undetected smaller planets capable of supporting life.  Read More

If you’re looking to get away from it all then Gliese 581g might just fit the bill. But be prepared to pack enough for the trip that, even on a rocket traveling 30,000 km per second (18,640 miles per second), would take 200 years. Gliese 581g is the first exoplanet discovered that sits in an area where water could exist on the planet’s surface. If confirmed, this would make it the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a “potentially habitable” one.  Read More

Launched on March 6, 2009, the Kepler spacecraft is continuing to scan the heavens for Earth-like exoplanets. The $US591 million Kepler boasts the largest camera ever sent into space, incorporating a 0.95-meter diameter Schmidt telescope with an array of 42 CCDs, each with 2200x1024 pixels. NASA has recently released 43 days-worth of data covering more than 156,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of our galaxy, but more analysis is needed before any conclusive findings can be made.  Read More

The last time we did a story on extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) in October, 2009, there had been 374 planets outside our solar system discovered. As of June 28, 2010 that number had risen to 464. The numbers look set to get a further boost thanks to a new technique that allows planets even down to the mass of the Earth to be detected with relatively small diameter telescopes. For the first time, using the technique known as Transit Timing Variation (TTV), a team of astronomers from Germany, Bulgaria and Poland have discovered an exotic extrasolar planet with 15 times the mass of Earth in the system WASP-3, 700 light years from the Sun in the constellation of Lyra.  Read More

Astronomers have proved that even the most basic technology can reveal significant developments in the heavens above. Using a simple ground-based telescope, a team from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) located a “super-Earth” orbiting a red dwarf star only 40 light-years away from Earth.  Read More

Raining rocks? The concept may not be as preposterous as it sounds according to scientists at Washington University in St Louis who have theorized that a recently-discovered exoplanet, COROT-7b, may have an atmosphere that does exactly that.  Read More