Three Worlds for TRAPPIST 1
6.05.2016

Three new found worlds orbit the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, a mere 40 light-years away. Their transits were first detected by the Belgian robotic TRAnsiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope, TRAPPIST, at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The newly discovered exoplanets are all similar in size to Earth.

Closest Star has Potentially Habitable Planet
24.08.2016

The star closest to the Sun has a planet similar to the Earth. As announced yesterday, recent observations confirmed that this planet not only exists but inhabits a zone where its surface temperature could allow liquid water, a key ingredient for life on Earth.

NGST 10b: Discovery of a Doomed Planet
25.02.2020

This hot jupiter is doomed. Hot jupiters are giant planets like Jupiter that orbit much closer to their parent stars than Mercury does to our Sun. But some hot jupiters are more extreme than others. NGTS-10b, illustrated generically, is the closest and fastest-orbiting giant planet yet discovered, circling its home star in only 18 hours.

APOD: 2025 September 8 Б IRAS 04302: Butterfly Disk Planet Formation
7.09.2025

This butterfly can hatch planets. The nebula fanning out from the star IRAS 04302+2247 may look like the wings of a butterfly, while the vertical brown stripe down the center may look like the butterfly's body -- but together they indicate an active planet-forming system.

Companion of a Young Sun like Star
19.09.2008

Located just 500 light-years away toward the constellation Scorpius, this star is only slightly less massive and a little cooler than the Sun. But it is much younger, a few million years old compared to the middle-aged Sun's 5 billion years.

Where Your Shadow Has Company
19.02.2016

Want to take a relaxing interstellar vacation? Consider visiting Kepler-16b, a world in a binary star system. In fact Kepler-16b is the first discovered circumbinary planet. It was detected in a wide 229 day orbit around a close pair of cool, low-mass stars some 200 light-years away.

HD 10180: Richest Yet Planetary System Discovered
25.08.2010

Do other rich planetary systems exist? Our Solar System has the most planets of any known star, most probably because it is so hard to detect planets around other stars. Sensitive measurements, though, have...

Zarmina s World
1.10.2010

A mere 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, red dwarf star Gliese 581 has received much scrutiny by astronomers in recent years. Earthbound telescopes had detected the signatures of multiple planets orbiting...

Extrasolar Super Earth Gliese 1214b Might Hold Water
10.09.2013

Might this distant planet hold water? Actually, given how close Gliese 1214b is to its parent star, any water, if it exists, would surely be in the form of steam. In the above artist...

Kepler s Suns and Planets
29.03.2011

Using the prolific planet hunting Kepler spacecraft, astronomers have discovered 1,235 candidate planets orbiting other suns since the Kepler mission's search for Earth-like worlds began in 2009. To find them, Kepler monitors...