Latest Exoplanetology Stories

The Kepler Space Telescope (KST), NASA’s planet-hunting observatory, has discovered 26 confirmed planets within 11 new solar systems, including one with five planets all orbiting closer to their sun than Mercury circles ours, scientists told Reuters on Thursday. The confirmed planets range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen of the planets are between Earth and Neptune size. However, it is not yet known which, if any, of these distant worlds are...

MOFFET FIELD, Calif., Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)...

Volunteers are being asked to join in the hunt in looking for nearby planets that could support life. Volunteers can visit the Planet Hunters website to see time-lapsed images of 150,000 stars that were taken by the Kepler space telescope. The members of the public will be taught signs that indicate the presence of a planet and how to alert experts if they spot them. "We know that people will find planets that are missed by the computer," Chris Lintott from Oxford University told...

Astronomers announced the findings of two new circumbinary planets, or worlds that orbit two different stars, during the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Austin, Texas on Wednesday. The discovery, which was presented by San Diego State University (SDSU) Associate Professor Dr. William Welsh and published online in the journal Nature, used data from NASA's Kepler Mission to locate a pair of transiting circumbinary planet systems. The two worlds, which have been dubbed...

[ Watch the Video ] Planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception An international team, including three astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has used the technique of gravitational microlensing to measure how common planets are in the Milky Way. After a six-year search that surveyed millions of stars, the team concludes that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The results will appear in the journal Nature on 12 January 2012....

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth, but orbit close to their star....

A team of University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) astrophysicists are suggesting that a habitable Earth-like planet could exist in a distant solar system recently discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Kepler-16b, a cold, gaseous planet orbiting two stars -- similar to the fictional Tatooine of Star Wars -- in the Kepler-16 system, was discovered by Kepler back in September. Based on the discovery, the UTA team conclude that an Earth-like planet could exist in the system’s...

NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of space science topics during the 2012 winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez St., Austin, Texas. Media briefings during the conference will feature topics including new results on exoplanets, galaxies, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, black holes and exciting new images. Missions featured include: Chandra, Fermi, Herschel, Hubble, Kepler, RXTE, SOFIA, Spitzer and WISE. In...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 5, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of space science topics during the 2012 winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS). The meeting runs from Sunday, Jan. 8, through Thursday, Jan. 12, at the Austin Convention Center, 500 E. Cesar Chavez St., Austin, Texas. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Media briefings during the conference will feature topics including new...

Astronomers report that they have discovered two Earth-sized planets circling a dying star that has passed the red giant stage. The planets have been engulfed by their star due to it swelling up to a red giant and dying out. The discovery could help shed new light on the destiny of stellar and planetary systems, such as our own solar system. Once the sun reaches the end of its life cycle in about 5 billion years, it will swell up to a red giant.  A red giant is an inflated star that...