Earth’s pleasant, life-giving atmosphere is turning out to be somewhat of an oddity. To get a better understanding of exoplanets, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has recreated one of these alien atmospheres in the lab.
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Earth’s pleasant, life-giving atmosphere is turning out to be somewhat of an oddity. To get a better understanding of exoplanets, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has recreated one of these alien atmospheres in the lab.
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A new study has projected that a future NASA telescope could be capable of discovering up to 1,400 new worlds. The orbital telescope, which has been nicknamed WFIRST, will build on the legacy of earlier missions to answer fundamental questions surrounding the nature of the universe.
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Scientists have used computer models to show that our planet has a moderate climate and isn't an ocean world because there was a massive star in the vicinity of the primordial solar system that evaporated some of the water that otherwise would have been delivered to Earth as it formed.
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A type of world dubbed a "hot Neptune" has been conspicuously few and far between in terms of exoplanet discoveries, but a new observation may explain why. Hubble has now spotted a hot Neptune named GJ 3470b that’s vanishing at a record rate.
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An international team of astronomers has discovered that helium atoms are causing the atmosphere of a "warm-Neptune" exoplanet to expand like a party balloon before escaping into the cold expanse of space.
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ESA has announced the launch window for its next space telescope, the CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS). The unmanned exoplanet observatory will lift off atop a Soyuz rocket from Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana between October 15 and November 14, 2019.
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Among the almost-4,000 exoplanets found so far, none really capture the imagination like TRAPPIST-1. Now a team of astronomers led by the University of Washington has simulated the climates that could be found on each TRAPPIST world.
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After nine years, NASA's exoplanet-hunting Kepler mission came to a final end Thursday as the space agency sent the radio commands ordering the onboard computer to shut down the unmanned space telescope's systems.
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Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth located just six light-years from our planet, orbiting the nearest lone star to our Sun. Named for its parent star, the exoplanet Barnard's Star b has a mass roughly 3.2 times that of the Earth, and has a frigid surface temperature of -170 °C (-274 °F).
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