Category Archives: Exoplanets

Potentially Habitable Planets

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Chad F

Over the past few decades, we have discovered a number of planets outside of our solar system.  The majority of these planets are giants, but a certain few have some Earth-like characteristics.  For these Earth-like planets there is a ranking system to determine how similar they are to Earth.  In the image above, the top […] Continue reading →

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New Discoveries: The New Age of Astronomy

Posted on April 29, 2013 by werdercj

This picture compares the inner planets of our solar system to Kepler-62, a newly discovered planetary system NASA’s Kepler mission has recently discovered three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” or the range of distances form a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water.  It is planets like these […] Continue reading →

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Terrestrial Planets around Metal Poor Stars?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by brendanfeeley

In our book, we learned that it is unlikely for planets to form around a star that is deficient in heavy metals.  In order to form terrestrial planets, you need a second-generation star to form from the nebular ashes of another star that produced heavy elements in its final moments. However, new research from studying […] Continue reading →

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3 Prime Locations for Life

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Megan C

Scientists recently announced that Kepler has found 3 exoplanets that are our best bet for finding life outside the solar system. These three planets – Kepler62e, Kepler 62f, and Kepler 69c – are the smallest to be discovered within the habitable zone, meaning that liquid water could potentially exist on any or all of them. And […] Continue reading →

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Transiting Exoplanets: The Search for Terrestrial Worlds

Posted on April 10, 2013 by werdercj

On Monday, NASA announced a new project scheduled to launch in 2017: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).  This project was selected after a three-year competition, and will use surveys covering 400 times as much sky as any past missions to discover transiting exoplanets.  This struck me as particularly significant having just studied methods of […] Continue reading →

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TESS: a New Eye in the Sky

Posted on April 10, 2013 by zvgio

NASA has a new project set to launch in 2017 and it’s going to be big. The TESS project will be tasked with the most trendy task in astronomy these days: finding exoplanets. Using a slew of wide-view cameras, TESS will peer tirelessly at the stars looking for “transits,” or dips in brightness when an […] Continue reading →

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Protoplanet Publicity

Posted on April 10, 2013 by burnspress

Scientists have located what they believe to be the first direct observation of a planet forming in its stellar womb of gas and dust. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, Sascha Quanz and an international team of scientists has been studying the young star HD 100546 and its surrounding gas. They were surprised when they spotted […] Continue reading →

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Searching the Sky

Posted on April 9, 2013 by a2megal

In class this week I was curious about how astronomers are able to constantly search for exoplanets. On one hand, I knew that the Kepler Space Telescope had played an integral part in discovering the roughly 2,740 exoplanetary candidates as of January 2013. However, keeping in mind how vast space is and how quickly exoplanets […] Continue reading →

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Habitable Exoplanets

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kevinm387

Researchers at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo have developed a rank ordering system of comparing exoplanets to Earth called the Earth Similarity Index. Using this system, scientists have been able to highlight a few exoplanets similar to Earth and have determined which ones are the most similar to Earth. To visit the website, […] Continue reading →

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Exoplanets in the Habitable Zone

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Will K

  According to recent astronomical discoveries, there are much more Earth sized exoplanets in the habitable zone than scientists previously thought. In a study of cool stars, called M-dwarfs, researchers found that rocky, medium sized exoplanets could be relatively common. The possibility of a moderate climate and liquid water is greater for these planets when […] Continue reading →

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