Latest Habitable zone Stories
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Holy Grail in the search for planets outside our solar system is finding one that could potentially support life. Traditionally, this means finding a planet with features similar to Earth, which is just the right distance from its host star that liquid water could be supported on the surface. Scientists believe the presence of liquid water on the surface is a necessary component for the proliferation of life. And a...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online One commonly used method in astronomy is to study spectra and light curves from stars and compare the data to known values, allowing researchers to derive information such as chemical composition, size, and surface temperature. The trouble with this method is it only works on stars that are bright enough or close enough to study in detail. Unfortunately, this precludes nearly three-quarters of the stellar population, which...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A SETI Institute scientist has been chosen to lead the design, development and operations of the data processing center for NASA’s next-generation successor to the Kepler Mission, the Mountain View, California-based organization announced on Friday. Jon M. Jenkins, a senior researcher at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute, will oversee operations of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission’s Data...
WASHINGTON, April 18, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Kepler-62 system has five planets; 62b, 62c, 62d, 62e and 62f. The Kepler-69 system has two planets; 69b and...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered what could be considered the most Earth-like planet ever found outside our Solar System. The team used the Kepler Space Telescope to find Kepler 62f, a small rocky planet orbiting a Sun-like star in the Lyra constellation. The planet is about 1.4 times the size of Earth, and receives about half as much heat and radiation. Kepler 62f is one of two "super-Earth" planets discovered in the star Kepler 62's...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers at The University of Auckland wrote in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that they have a new method that could lead to the discovery of 100 billion earth-like planets. The new strategy, called gravitational microlensing, requires a combination of data from microlensing and the NASA Kepler space telescope. “Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new study from Penn State's Department of Geosciences suggests that the number of potentially habitable planets is greater than previously thought, and that some of those planets are likely to be found around nearby stars. "We now estimate that if we were to look at 10 of the nearest small stars we would find about four potentially habitable planets, give or take," said Ravi Kopparapu, a post-doctoral researcher in geosciences....
[WATCH VIDEO: Flying Through The HD 100546 System] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers, for the first time, may have made a direct observation of a planet forming inside a thick disc of gas and dust. An international team led by Sascha Quanz, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), used the European Space Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT). Their discovery could help improve scientists' knowledge of how planets form and...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Another new planetary system has been discovered by Kepler scientists, and this one happens to be home to the smallest planet ever discovered, circling around a star that is strikingly similar to our Sun. The Kepler-37 system sits about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. Only slightly larger than our moon, smaller than Mercury, and about a third the size of Earth, one of its planets is the smallest ever identified by...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of...
