Exoplanets

Ceres' Two Spots

Are Ceres' Bright Spots Signs of Alien Life? NASA Wants You to Weigh In

From the moment they were discovered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, the two bright spots on Ceres have fascinated scientists and amateur astronomers across the world. What are they and why are they there? Scientists believed that once Dawn reached orbit they would be able to learn more about these two mysterious spots, but even now they remain a mystery. NASA has made an unusual move by inviting the public to weigh in on what they believe is the nature of these two bright spots.

Scientists Catch Light Bouncing Off Exoplanet

An international team of astronomers says they have managed to take the first visible light spectrum from an exoplanet, giving them yet another new tool to probe the nature of the exoplanet known as 51 Pegasi b, otherwise known as “hot Jupiter.”
Exomoon

The Hunt is On for Exomoons That May Harbor Life

The search for life doesn't end at our solar system and it is not limited to just planets. Scientists are now searching for moons orbiting alien planets in other systems that could harbor extraterrestrial life.

Star Wars Tatooine Planet May Be Common

One of the most iconic scenes ever filmed for Star Wars occurred when Luke walked outside his boyhood home on the rocky, desert planet of Tatooine and looked up at the two suns setting. Now, scientists believe that these Earth-like worlds with two suns in their sky may actually be more common than originally thought, throughout the Milky Way Galaxy.
Pluto

Could More Dwarf Planets Lie Beyond Pluto

According to calculations by scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Cambridge, not one, but at least two dwarf planets must exist beyond Pluto in order to explain the orbital behavior of extreme trans-Neptunian objects.
Planets

New Planets Hiding In the Shadow of Pluto

While space agencies and astronomers alike have found that the outer fringes of our very own solar system holds small asteroids and chunks of ice, as opposed to life, it turns out that our investigation of the relatively small solar system is far from over. In fact, a pair of new studies published just this week reveal that we may be adding new members to the roster as at least two new planets larger than Earth are likely hiding beyond Pluto.
Solar System

New Study Reveals Prospective Planets Just Beyond Pluto—And There May Be More Than One

Though Pluto may have been demoted from the title of planet to “dwarf planet”, NASA’s newest mission New Horizons which plans a flyby next summer has sparked new interest in the farthest depths of our very own solar system. And it appears that we may not just stop there. According to a new study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, researchers believe that even closer than our Oort cloud we may find at least two more planets circling our Sun far beyond Pluto’s vast expanses.
Kepler-186f

NASA Researchers Bring Exoplanets to Life in Kepler Style

How many planets like our Earth are out there in space? Well, while the possibilities are endless, and with the vast expanses of the universe the search may be endless. But thanks to NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, researchers have to date discovered 1,000 Earth-like exoplanets that seem to fit the bill. And in celebration of the record-breaking discovery, researchers at NASA are giving the public a view of what life on these exoplanets inhabited by humans might just look like—with a vintage feel.
Exoplanet Osiris

Researchers Reveal Method for Magnetic Field Calculation of Exoplanets

Knowing the level of a planet’s magnetic field can be an important fact to know in the study of how they interact. But studying the fields of an exoplanet, outside of our solar system and orbiting a foreign star, can be a difficult task that researchers have not yet been able to achieve. Though in nearly two decades of looking past our solar system to investigate exoplanets, researchers have developed several methods to estimate magnetic fields at quite a distance.
1 2 3 4 5

Recommended Stories

Real Time Analytics