Latest Aleksander Wolszczan Stories

NASA Science [ Watch The Video ] An international team of astronomers has caught a star in the act of devouring one of its planets. BD+48 740, a red giant they observed using the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, appears to have the fumes of a scorched planet in its atmosphere. This is consistent with a rocky world, recently destroyed. Could the same thing happen to Earth? Yes indeed, says Alex Wolszczan, a member of the research team from Penn...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers say they've witnessed the death of a planet, which found its journey ended by way of its own star. The scientists reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters that BD+48 740 became a red giant at the end of its life, helping it to eventually consume its close-by planet. "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some 5...

Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, astronomers observed the planets' parent stars -- called HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 -- tens of light years away from our solar system. One of the massive, dying stars has an additional mystery object orbiting it, according to team leader Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and...

Two brown dwarf-sized objects orbiting a giant old star show that planets may assemble around stars more quickly and efficiently than anyone thought possible, according to an international team of astronomers."We have found two brown dwarf-sized masses around an ordinary star, which is very rare," said Alex Wolszczan, Evan Pugh professor of astronomy and astrophysics, Penn State and lead scientist on the project.The star, BD +20 2457, is a K2 giant -- an old bloated star nearing the...

A new planet closely orbiting a red giant star was found by a team of astronomers from Penn State University and Nicolaus Copernicus University. The research sheds light on ways in which aging stars can influence nearby planets, Penn State said in a news release. The discovered planet has a mass about six times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system that includes Earth, said Alexander Wolszczan from Penn State and Andrzej Niedzielski of Nicolaus Copernicus University. Team...

A team of astronomers from Penn State and Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland has discovered a new planet that is closely orbiting a red-giant star, HD 102272, which is much older than our own Sun. The planet has a mass that is nearly six times that of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. The team includes Alexander Wolszczan, the discoverer of the first planets ever found outside our solar system, who is an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the director...

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered new evidence that planets might rise up out of a dead star's ashes. The infrared telescope surveyed the scene around a pulsar, the remnant of an exploded star, and found a surrounding disk made up of debris shot out during the star's death throes. The dusty rubble in this disk might ultimately stick together to form planets. This is the first time scientists have detected planet-building materials around a star that died in a fiery blast....