Johns Hopkins University (JHU) continues to pad its space community résumé with their interactive map, “The map of the observable Universe”, that takes viewers on a 13.7-billion-year-old tour of the cosmos from the present to the moments after the Big Bang. While JHU is responsible for creating the site, additional contributions were made by NASA, the European Space Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.
How do astronomers find worlds orbiting other stars? power point presentation : Automated transcript by otter.ai More information about this series: (Youtube play list)
Join the citizen Planet patrol from the zooniverse!!!!
The Very Large Telescope
Yet another chart of exoplanets
Click here
The Planetary society has A catalog of Exoplanets!
The French has The EXOPLANET CATALOG!
Planetary Habitability Laboratory
of the University of Pureto Rico at Aerciobo, Puerto Rico
This poster shows more than 500 exoplanets discovered before October 2015 arranged according to their temperature and density. Credit and copyright: Martin Vargic. Used by permission.
Image: This image shows an artist’s impression of the 10 hot Jupiter exoplanets studied by astronomer David Sing and his colleagues using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. From top left to lower left, these planets are WASP-12b, WASP-6b, WASP-31b, WASP-39b, HD 189733b, HAT-P-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, HAT-P-1b and HD 209458b. Credit: NASA, ESA, D. Sing (University of Exeter). A couple of things to note in the image. The colors are vivid but as this news release explains, they are purely for illustrative purposes. We have little data on the color of any of these worlds with the exception of HD 189733b, sometimes called the ‘blue planet.’ The cloud patterns shown here are also theoretical, based largely on what we see on Jupiter.
ET's not talking—and we want to know why. Here are some possible explanations.
Published on Dec 8, 2015 Not a single confirmed planet outside the Solar System had been detected before the year 1990. But, remarkably, we now know of thousands and have studied many in surprising detail. This ESOcast takes a look at how ESO’s observatories in Chile have been at the forefront of this enormous expansion in knowledge, and how their state-of-the-art instruments are continuing to discover and study the extraordinary diversity of exoplanets. More information and download options: Subscribe to ESOcast in iTunes! Receive future episodes on YouTube by pressing the Subscribe button above or follow us on Vimeo: Watch more ESOcast episodes: Find out how to view and contribute subtitles for the ESOcast in multiple languages, or translate this video on dotSUB: Credit: ESO Editing: Herbert Zodet. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Rebecca Davies, Richard Hook and Herbert Zodet. Narration: Sara Mendes da Costa. Music: STAN DART (www.stan-dart.com). Footage and photos: ESO, L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, B. Tafreshi (twanight.org), Gianluca Lombardi (glphoto.it), José Francisco Salgado (josefrancisco.org), Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), NASA, ESA, A. Fitzsimmons, D. Juncher, S. Brunier, Digitized Sky Survey 2, L. Weinstein/Ciel et Espace Photos, Solar Dynamics Observatory, F. Pont (Exeter University, UK), A. Lecavelier des Etangs (IAP/CNRS/UPMC, France), M. Zamani, Y. Beletsky (LCO) and C. Malin (christophmalin.com). Directed by: Herbert Zodet. Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen. Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
The Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea. CHARIS works in conjunction with Subaru.
Image: Dr. Hideaki Fujiwara - Subaru Telescope, NAOJ.
This image from the CHARIS instrument shows planets located around a star in the planetary system HR8799. Image: N. Jeremy Kasdin and team. CHARIS was designed and built by a team led by N. Jeremy Kasdin, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering
at Princeton University. It took them five years to build CHARIS. The spectrograph sits inside a 500 lb case that measures 30x30x12. Inside that case, it’s kept at -223.15 Celsius (50 Kelvin, -369 F.)
The CHARIS instrument has nine mirrors, five filters, two prism assemblies and a microlens array.
The microlens array is a special optical device with an array of tiny lenses etched into its surface.
What are Technosignatures? Technosignatures are simply evidence of technology. They’re the effects or signature of technological use. The most obvious example might be radio waves, but some experts in technosignatures reject those, because the universe is riddled with radio waves produced by natural sources. NASA is targeting technosignatures in its renewed effort to detect alien civilizations. Congress asked NASA to re-boot its search for other civilizations a few months ago. Their first step towards that goal is the NASA Technosignatures Workshop, held in Houston from September 26th to 28th, 2018.
Kepler exoplanet candidates as of June 2017. Will some of these planets have technosignatures? Image: NASA/Kepler
The vortex coronagraph at the Keck Observatory captured this image of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HD 141569, which is about 380 light years from Earth. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The vortex mask shown at left is made out of synthetic diamond. When viewed with a scanning electron microscope, right, the “vortex” microstructure of the mask is revealed. Image credit: University of Liège/Uppsala University
The vortex coronagraph captured this image of the brown dwarf PIA21417. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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“Previous studies have incorrectly assumed that a planet’s internal pressure is simply a function of the mass of the planet, and so it increases continuously as the planet grows. What we’ve shown is that the pressure can temporarily change after a major impact, followed by a longer term increase in pressure as the post-impact body recovers. This finding has major implications for the planet’s chemical structure and subsequent evolution.”
Image: Artist’s depiction of a synestia, a rotating donut of planetary material that can result from the collision of two planetary bodies. In time, the synestia cools back into one or more spherical planetary bodies. Credit: Ron Miller/Scientific American.
Giant impacts stochastically change the internal pressures of terrestrial planets (PDF)
Information on Exoplanets channel main page
The Exoplanets youtube channel
Exoplanets have been a particularly hot topic of late. More than 4000 of them have been discovered since the first in 1995. Now one more can potentially be added to the list. This one is orbiting Gliese 3470, a red dwarf star located in the constellation Cancer. What makes this discovery particularly interesting is that this planet wasn’t discovered by any professional astronomers using high tech equipment like the Kepler Space Telescope. It was found entirely by amateurs.
Today I talk about a network of amateur astronomers searching for habitable exoplanets. If you liked the video, please consider subscribing. The first exoplanet candidate we discovered: Saturn-sized Planet Found in the Habitable Zone of Another Star. The First Planet Completely Discovered by Amateur Astronomers EXOPLANETS Contact form: This project has been featured in the following media: Forbes magazine FACEBOOK SITE P The Newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies RINCIPIUM Amateur Astronomers Join Hunt for Exoplanets from Centuari Dreams Hackabay chat room Inside The Search For Another Habitable Planet Within 100 Light Years Of Earth
Graphic showing how a dip in the brightness of a star can correlate to a planet transiting in front of the star. Credit: NASA
Almost all known exoplanets are larger than Earth and typically as large as the gas planet Neptune. The 18 newly discovered planets (here in orange and green), for comparison, are much smaller than Neptune, three of them even smaller than Earth and two more as large as Earth. Planet EPIC 201238110.02 is the only one of the new planets cool enough to potentially host liquid water on its surface. Image Credit: NASA/JPL (Neptune), NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring (Earth), MPS/René Heller
As the planet moves in front of its star, the star’s luminosity dips, and then returns to its former level when the transit is complete. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, G. Bacon (STSci)
The new algorithm from Heller, Rodenbeck, and Hippke does not search for abrupt drops in brightness like previous standard algorithms, but for the characteristic, gradual dimming and recovery. This makes the new transit search algorithm much more sensitive to small planets the size of the Earth. Image Credit: NASA/SDO (Sun), MPS/René Heller
Figure 1. This planet could be an important discovery in the search for life on other planets By Nicole Kiefert | Published: Monday, November 28, 2016 Researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo, and the Astrobiology Center have nailed down an important property of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet while it was in transit. The team used the MuSCAT instrument on the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory’s 188-cm telescope to study the extrasolar planet, called K2-3d, discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft in 2015.
Figure 2: Transiting planets located in the habitable zone (the orbital region where a planet could hold liquid water on the surface), plotted in terms of planet radius vs. host star magnitude (brightness). Black circles represent confirmed planets discovered by the Kepler mission and white circles represent unconfirmed planet candidates. The orange triangles represent the Earth sized planets TRAPPIST-1c and TRAPPIST-1d observed 40 light-years away by a ground based telescope. TRAPPIST-1c and TRAPPIST-1d are thought to be just outside the habitable zone, but they are plotted for reference. The host star of K2-3d (red star) is the brightest in this figure. Credit: Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ)
Figure 3: Predicted transit time deviation from the improved K2-3d transit ephemeris based on this research. The solid red line indicates the predicted times based on this research, the shaded area shows the uncertainty range. Squares, triangles, and circles are respectively the transit time data from the Kepler Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and the latest observing instrument MuSCAT on the Okayama 188-cm Reflector Telescope. Gray marks show the values calculated in previous research and black marks represent the values re-calculated in this research. Purple and orange dotted lines are the transit ephemerides calculated in previous research using the K2 and the K2+Spitzer data, respectively. This research succeeded in correcting the predictions for the 2018 transit times by more than an hour. Credit: Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) SOURCES: Ground-based Transit Observation of the Habitable-zone Super-Earth K2-3d The Astronomical Journal:GROUND-BASED TRANSIT OBSERVATION OF THE HABITABLE-ZONE SUPER-EARTH K2-3D
Published on May 17, 2013 The artist conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Debris coalesces to create rocky 'planetesimals' that collide and grow to eventually form planets. The results of this study show that small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content suggesting that their existence might be widespread in the galaxy. Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
Figure 1. Image of HD 100546 obtained with the Gemini Planet Imager at near-infrared wavelengths (1.6 microns).
The cross shows the position of the star, the green hatched lines show the region interior to which GPI's coronagraph
blocks our view of the system. HD 100546 b appears as a bright point source sitting on a finger of disk emission.
Astronomers report that this system, surrounding a star known as HD 100546,
is giving us a glimpse back in time to see what other more developed
exoplanet systems looked like in their adolescence. By Gemini Observatory, Hilo, Hawaii | Published: Wednesday, December 02, 2015
Image: A team of astronomers observed the planetary disc surrounding the star RX J1615,
which lies in the constellation of Scorpius, 600 light-years from Earth.
The observations show a complex system of concentric rings surrounding the young star,
forming a shape resembling a titanic version of the rings that encircle Saturn.
Such an intricate sculpting of rings in a protoplanetary disc has only been imaged a handful of times before.
Credit: ESO, J. de Boer et al.
The planetary disc surrounding the star HD 97048 in the constellation of Chameleon, about 500 light-years from Earth.
The juvenile disc is formed into concentric rings. This symmetry is in contrast to most protoplanetary systems which contain
asymmetrical spiral arms, voids and vortexes. The displayed image is a composite derived from two independent observations
that targeted the inner and outer regions of this disc. The central part of the image appears dark because SPHERE blocks out
the light from the brilliant central star to reveal the much fainter structures surrounding it.
Credit: ESO, C. Ginski et al.
The planetary disc surrounding the star HD 135344B, about 450 light-years away. The disc shows prominent spiral arm-like structures.
Credit: ESO, T. Stolker et al.
An illustration of an accretion disk feeding a central young star, or protostar, and the gaseous jet ejected from the protostar. Credit: Yin-Chih Tsai/ASIAA
This artist’s concept shows a young stellar object and the whirling accretion disk surrounding it. NASA/JPL-Caltech
Jet and disk in the HH 212 protostellar system: (a) A composite image of the jet, produced by combining images from different telescopes. (b) Close-up of the center of the dusty disk at 8 AU resolution. (c) An accretion disk model that can reproduce the observed dust emission in the disk. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Lee et al.
Combined ALMA/VLA image of HL Tau. CREDIT: Carrasco-Gonzalez, et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF. - See more click here
New images of a young star made with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA)
reveal what scientists think may be the very earliest stages in the formation of planets.
The scientists used the VLA to see unprecedented detail of the inner portion of a dusty disk surrounding the star,
some 450 light-years from Earth. -
ALMA image of HL Tau at left; VLA image, showing clump of dust, at right. CREDIT: Carrasco-Gonzalez, et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF. -
Artist�s illustration of WASP-18b, an exoplanet about ten times Jupiter�s mass located some 330 light years from Earth,
along with optical and x-ray data in the lower right. Credit: NASA/Chandra
Exoplanet β Pic b orbiting β Pictoris from Dunlap Institute on Vimeo.
A series of images taken between November 2013 to April 2015 with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) on the Gemini South telescope in Chile shows the exoplanet β Pic b orbiting the star β Pictoris, which lies over 60 light-years from Earth. In the images, the star is at the centre of the left-hand edge of the frame; it is hidden by the Gemini Planet Imager’s coronagraph. We are looking at the planet’s orbit almost edge-on; the planet is closer to the Earth than the star. The images are based on observations described in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, 16 September 2015 and whose lead author is Maxwell Millar-Blanchaer. GPI is a groundbreaking instrument that was developed by an international team led by Stanford University’s Prof. Bruce Macintosh (a U of T alumnus) and the University of California Berkeley’s Prof. James Graham (former director of the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, U of T). Image credit: M. Millar-Blanchaer, University of Toronto; F. Marchis, SETI Institute
Young stars have a disk of gas and dust around them called a protoplanetary disk.
Out of this disk planets are formed, and the presence of water ice in the disc affects where
different types of planets form.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Streamed live on Oct 19, 2015 Join +Fraser Cain and +Pamela Gay for a live episode of Astronomy Cast. We'll record our 30-minute show,
and then stay tuned for another episode today! Ep. 388: Space Structures This week astronomers announced an unusual transit signal from another star. Although it’s most likely a natural phenomenon, one remote possibility is that this is some kind of alien megastructure. Freeman Dyson and others have considered this idea for decades. Today we’ll talk about the kinds of structures that aliens might want to build. Category Entertainment License Standard YouTube License
Diagram showing the habitable zones of the Solar System (upper row) and the Gliese 581 system (lower row). Based on a diagram by Franck Selsis, Univ. of Bordeaux. Credit: ESO
Nearby Star Hosts Planet in its Habitable Zone
Press Release - Source: UNSW Australia Posted December 16, 2015 11:24 AM
Wolf 1061c The planet, more than four times the mass of the Earth, is one of three that the team detected around a red dwarf star called Wolf 1061.
"It is a particularly exciting find because all three planets are of low enough mass to be potentially rocky and have a solid surface,
and the middle planet, Wolf 1061c, sits within the 'Goldilocks' zone where it might be possible for liquid water --
and maybe even life -- to exist," says lead study author UNSW's Dr. Duncan Wright.
Planetary Science With the New Webb Telescope | NASA JWST Space HD Video
Published on Jan 23, 2013 Visit my website - the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope will allow detailed analysis of exoplanets and their atmospheres. It will also be used in our own solar system for study of the outer planets, moons, comets, and asteroids. Please rate and comment, thanks! Video Credits: NASA GSFC Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
Video News File: Kepler Discovers First Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone of Another Star
Published on Apr 17, 2014 [Video News File; media resource preview] NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has discovered the first validated Earth-size planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a distant star,
an area where liquid water might exist on its surface. The planet, Kepler-186f, is ten percent larger in size than Earth and orbits its parent star,
Kepler-186, every 130 days. The star, located about 500 light-years from Earth, is classified as an M1 dwarf and is half the size and mass of our sun.
Kepler's Six Years In Science (and Counting)
The graphic tells NASA's Kepler spacecraft's story by the numbers from the moment it began hunting for planets
outside our solar system on May 12, 2009. From the trove of data collected, we have learned that planets are common,
that most sun-like stars have at least one planet and that nature makes planets with unimaginable diversity.
Image credit: NASA Ames/W Stenzel
Time-lapse video of WASP-43b over one planet rotation
Located 260 light-years away, exoplanet WASP-43b is no place to call home. It is a world of extremes,
where seething winds howl at the speed of sound from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit day side, hot enough to melt steel,
to a pitch-black night side with plunging temperatures below 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to make the most detailed global map yet of the thermal glow from this turbulent world.
The Companion
DIsk detective.org
Published on Jan 6, 2015
Citizen scientists using the NASA-sponsored website DiskDetective.org have logged 1 million classifications
of potential debris disks and disks surrounding young stellar objects (YSO). This data will help provide a crucial set of targets for
future planet-hunting missions. By combing through objects identified in an infrared survey made with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission,
Disk Detective aims to find two types of developing planetary environments: YSO disks, which are less than 5 million years old and contains
large quantities of gas, and debris disks, which tend to be older than 5 million years, and contain belts of rocky or icy debris.
Astronomers have a detected a hydrogen-rich atmosphere around super-Earth 55-Cancri e, once called the "Diamond Planet." It orbits very close to its host star, and has a surface
temperature exceeding 1700 C. Illustration.
Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, M. Kornmesser
The turbulent atmosphere of a hot, gaseous planet known as HD 80606b is shown in this simulation based
on data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The planet spends most of its time far away from its star, but every 111 days,
it swings extremely close to the star, experiencing a massive burst of heat. Spitzer measured the whole heating cycle of this planet,
determining its coolest (less than 400 degrees Fahrenheit) and hottest (2,000 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-CalTech
Illustration of the hot extrasolar planet 2M1207b orbiting a brown dwarf.
Credits: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon/STScI
This is a composite image of the brown dwarf object 2M1207 (blue-white) and the planet 2M1207b,
seen in red, located 170 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus.
The photo is based on three near-infrared exposures with the taken with the 8.2-m VLT Yepun telescope
at the ESO Paranal Observatory. Credit: ESO
Exoplanet 2M1207 b with the Solar System planet Jupiter for comparison. Although four times more massive than the Jovian planet,
gravity compresses its matter to keep it relatively small. Credit: Wikipedia / Aldaron
This artist’s impression shows the view from a terrestrial exoplanet towards
the planet’s host star in a triple stellar system.
Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
After years of scanning the skies without spotting anything, alien-hunting scientists
are going to start looking somewhere completely different. April 5, 2016 reddwarf2.jpgRed dwarf stars to be examined for alien life by SETI Institute astronomers
Red dwarf stars have usually been ignored by alien-hunting scientists, but new research suggests they could support life
An artist’s conception shows a planetary system around a red dwarf star. (Credit: ESO)
Published on Jan 31, 2016 The last star in the universe will be a red dwarf. Red dwarfs in general might be great places to look for aliens – or planets for humans to find a new home after our solar system has died. Support us on Patreon so we can make more stuff (and get cool wallpapers): https://www.patreon.com/Kurzgesagt?ty=h Get the music of the video here: https://epicmountainmusic.bandcamp.co... https://soundcloud.com/epicmountain/r... http://epic-mountain.com Or follow us on social media or reddit: http://kurzgesagt.org https://www.reddit.com/r/kurzgesagt https://twitter.com/Kurz_Gesagt https://www.facebook.com/Kurzgesagt
Is there life on other planets, somewhere in this enormous Universe? That’s probably the most compelling question we can ask.
A lot of space science and space missions are pointed directly at that question. The Kepler mission is designed to find exoplanets, which are planets orbiting other stars. More specifically,
its aim is to find planets situated in the habitable zone around their star. And it’s done so.
The Kepler mission has found 297 confirmed and candidate planets that are likely in the habitable zone of their star,
and it’s only looked at a tiny patch of the sky.
This artist’s impression shows a sunset seen from the super-Earth Gliese 667 Cc.
The brightest star in the sky is the red dwarf Gliese 667 C, which is part of a triple star system.
The other two more distant stars, Gliese 667 A and B, appear to the right in the sky.
(Credit: L. Calcada / ESO)
This illustration shows a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Material from the thick disk flows along
the star’s magnetic field lines and is deposited onto the star’s surface. When material hits the star, it lights up brightly.
The star's irregular illumination allows astronomers to measure the gap between the disk and the star by using a
technique called "photo-reverberation" or "light echoes." First, astronomers look at how much time it takes for light from
the star to arrive at Earth. Then, they compare that with the time it takes for light from the star to bounce off the
inner edge of the disk and then arrive at Earth. That time difference is used to measure distance, as the speed of light is constant. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Last Updated: April 26, 2016 Editor: Tony Greicius
Astronomers can use light echoes to measure the distance from a star to its surrounding protoplanetary disk.
This diagram illustrates how the time delay of the light echo is proportional to the distance between the star
and the inner edge of the disk. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
An artistic representation of Gliese 832 c against a stellar nebula background.
A new paper says Gliese 832 might be home to another planet similar to this, but in the habitable zone.
Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico, Arecibo, NASA/Hubble, Stellarium.
Artist’s impression of the super-Earth 55 Cancri e orbiting its host star.
Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Published on Mar 30, 2016 The most detailed map of a small, rocky ‘super Earth’ to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava,
with a molten ‘hot’ side and solid ‘cool’ side. Read more: Category Education License Standard YouTube License Using data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have mapped how conditions on
55 Cancri e – a ‘nearby’ super-Earth exoplanet – change throughout a complete orbit.
An artist’s conception of an exoplanet courtesy of NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech - See more
The tool that allowed the team to improve planet hunting in the near-infrared—a cell that contains methane gas. Image is courtesy of Peter Plavchan. - See more
Artist's impression of a hot Jupiter exoplanet. Getty AFP An international team of astronomers led by Kaloyan Penev of Princeton University recently discovered
a hot Jupiter exoplanet that seems to be speeding up the rotation of its host star. The planet, called HATS-18b,
is about 2,100 light-years away, and it is massive enough and close enough to its parent star to influence the star's
rotation with its gravity.
This is an artist’s impression of an exoplanet. Image credit: Ron Miller. According to a team of scientists led by Prof. Sara Seager from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
gases emitted by alien life forms on habitable extrasolar planets could be detected remotely by telescopes,
but these gases might have quite different compositions from those in the atmosphere of our planet.
Here is NASA's new
This artist's concept depicts Kepler-69c, a super-Earth-size planet in the habitable zone of a star like our sun, located about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech -See more
The diagram compares the planets of the inner solar system to Kepler-69, a two-planet system about 2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech -See more
LIFE ON KEPLER-62F?
Exoplanet Kepler 62f would need an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide for water to be in liquid form.
Artist's Illustration: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle
Image: This animation shows the position of the five planets of Kepler-80 whenever the outer two planets (green and red) pass by one another, about every 27 days
over the course of four years of observations by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. Due to the rare synchronized nature
of the system, the middle two planets (blue and purple) also return to almost exactly the same location.
The innermost planet (yellow) is not synchronized and hence is found at a random location every 27 days.
MacDonald et al. 2016 were able to show that this pattern indicates formation by “migration,”
where the orbits shrink very slightly over time. The orbits are to scale with each other, but the planets are shown 50 times larger.
The outer four planets are all about 4-6 times the mass of the Earth. The inner three planets ( blue, purple, and yellow) appear rocky and the outer two planets (green and red ) are likely rocky with a very puffy Hydrogen/Helium atmosphere. Credit: MacDonald/Ragozzine/FIT.
Published on May 11, 2016 These animations show approximately 200,000 years of orbital evolution in the Kepler-223 planetary system.
The planets’ interactions with the disk of gas and dust in which they formed caused their orbits to shrink
toward their star over time at differing rates. Once two planets reach a resonant state (for example, one planet orbits
its star three times every time the next planet orbits two times), the planets strongly interact with each other.
The interactions become apparent in the animations as the orbits shrink (left and top right) when the orbital period ratios of
neighboring planets (bottom right) get stuck at constant values. Even as the planets continue moving inwards (upper right) they do
so in concert, migrating together locked in this configuration. They also cause each other’s orbits to change from nearly circular to elliptical.
This is represented by the varying orbits on the left panel and the spread of the orbital distances for each individual planet in the upper right.
(Credit: Daniel Fabrycky and Cezary Migazewski) Category Education License Standard YouTube License
Published on May 12, 2016 For the full story, visit: A four-planet system observed several years ago by the Kepler spacecraft is actually a rarity: Its planets, all miniature Neptunes nestled close
to the star, are orbiting in a unique resonance that has been locked in for billions of years. For every three orbits of the outermost planet,
the second orbits four times, the third six times and the innermost eight times. Such orbital resonances are not uncommon – our own dwarf planet Pluto orbits the sun twice during the same period that Neptune completes
three orbits – but a four-planet resonance is. Astronomers from the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley, who are reporting the discovery online May 11
in Nature, are particularly interested in this stellar system because our system’s four giant planets –
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus – are thought to have once been in resonant orbits that were disrupted sometime during their 4.5-billion-year
history. According to co-author Howard Isaacson, a UC Berkeley research astronomer, the Kepler-223 star system can help us understand how our solar system
and other stellar systems discovered in the past few decades formed. In particular, it could help resolve the question of whether planets stay
in the same place they formed, or whether they move closer to or farther from their star over the eons. Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally Simulations by Daniel Fabrycky and Cezary Migazewski Music: "Candlepower" by Chris Zabriskie http://www.news.berkeley.edu/ http://www.facebook.com/UCBerkeley http://twitter.com/UCBerkeley http://instagram.com/ucberkeleyofficial https://plus.google.com/+berkeley
Kepler-223 is a G5V star in the constellation Cygnus with a unique exoplanetary system discovered by the Kepler mission.
Image credit: Aladin/Digitised Sky Survey — STScI/NASA, Coloured & Healpixed by CDS.
The arrangement and relative sizes of the four planets around Kepler-223, though not to scale. One AU (astronomical unit) is 93 million miles,
the distance between Earth and Sun in our solar system. Image credit: UC Berkeley.
The 8:6:4:3 orbital resonance of the four Neptune-sized planets in the Kepler-223 system. Animation credit: W.Rebel, Wikimedia Commons.
This graphic shows the orbit of the planet in the HD 131399 system (red line)
and the orbits of the stars(blue lines).
The planet orbits the brightest star in the system, HD 131399A. Credit: ESO
This composite image shows the newly discovered exoplanet HD 131399Ab in the triple-star system HD 131399.
The image of the planet was obtained with the SPHERE imager. This is the first exoplanet to be discovered by SPHERE
and one of very few directly-imaged planets. This picture was created from two separate SPHERE observations:
one of the three stars and one to detect the faint planet. The planet appears vastly brighter in this image than in would
in reality in comparison to the stars. Credit: ESO/K. Wagner et al.
This artist’s impression shows a view of the triple star system HD 131399
from close to the giant planet orbiting in the system.
The planet is known appears at the lower-left of the picture. Credit: ESO / L. Calcada
Published on Jul 7, 2016 Some 320 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation of Centaurus (The Centaur),
the planet HD 131399Ab orbits around a star in a triple-star system. HD 131399Ab
is about 16 million years old, one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date,
and has an estimated mass of four Jupiter masses. An observer on HD 131399Ab would either
experience constant daylight or enjoy triple sunrises and sunsets each day, depending on the seasons,
which last longer than human lifetimes. Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org) ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser ESO/K. Wagner et al. ESO/L. Calçada
Artist's impressions of three newly-discovered exoplanets orbiting an ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org).
Location of TRAPPIST-1 in the constellation Aquarius. Credit: ESO/IAU and Sky & Telescope.
Structure of the TRAPPIST-1 exosystem. The green is the star’s habitable zone. Credit: PHL.
Artist’s impression of the view from the most distant exoplanet discovered around the dwarf star TRAPPIST-1.
Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.
Image: Comparison between the Sun and the ultracool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Credit: ESO.
That’s a useful insight because we have no other information about the nature of these planets.
Their masses have not been measured, and we have no other data about the kind of planets that can exist
around ultracool dwarf stars (TRAPPIST-1 is an M8 dwarf) because the TRAPPIST-1 worlds are our first transiting example.
The excerpt below shows the team’s reasoning, building on the fact that the lack of features in the combined spectrum
rules out certain kinds of atmospheres:
Image: The binary transit visualized. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScl. With an extended gas envelope ruled out, we wind up with a range of possible atmospheres,
ranging from the CO2-dominated Venus to an Earth-like atmosphere with heavy clouds or a depleted atmosphere
like what we see on Mars. To push further into the possibilities, the team has formed a consortium called
SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets Eclipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars), the good news being that they are building
larger versions of the TRAPPIST instrument in Chile that will focus on the brightest ultracool dwarf stars in the southern hemisphere.
Consider the effort an attempt to build the kind of pre-screening tools that our future space telescopes like the
James Webb instrument will need for their target list. The paper is de Wit et al., “A combined transmission spectrum of the Earth-sized exoplanets TRAPPIST-1 b and c,” Nature 20 July 2016 (preprint).
The discovery paper is Gillon et al., “Temperate Earth-sized Planets Transiting a Nearby Ultracool Dwarf Star,”
published online in Nature 2 May 2016 (abstract). An MIT news release is available
Artist’s concept showing what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Published on Feb 22, 2017 Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone. Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in front of the star. Spitzer was able to identify a total of seven rocky worlds, including three in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be found. The video features interviews with Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center, Caltech/IPAC; Nikole Lewis, James Webb Space Telescope project scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute; and Michaël Gillon, principal investigator, TRAPPIST, University of Liege, Belgium. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope, as well as other ground-based observatories. The system was named for the TRAPPIST telescope. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at Caltech/IPAC. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, NASA SPITZER CALTECH SPITZER Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
A plot of diameter versus the amount of sunlight hitting the planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system, scaled by the size of the Earth and the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth. Credit: F. Marchis/H. Marchis
Artist conception of the TRappist-1 system
Artist's impression of the "Venus-like" exoplanet GJ 1132b. Credit: cfa.harvard.edu
Artist's impression of the exoplanet GJ 1132 b, which orbits the red dwarf star GJ 1132. Astronomers have managed to detect the atmosphere of this Earth-like planet. Credit: MPIA (wikipedia article) Webpage
Artist's impression of the "Venus-like" exoplanet GJ 1132b. Credit: cfa.harvard.edu
The ESO’s Paranal Observatory, located in the Atacama Desert of Chile. Credit: ESO
Published on Nov 12, 2015 Scientists have discovered a new exoplanet that is located 39 light-years from Earth, making it the closest Earth-sized exoplanet yet discovered. (Learn more:) Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick/MIT Additional imagery courtesy of Emily Heisted, Zach Berta-Thompson, Jonathan Irwin, Dana Berry and Chris Gunn/NASA Music sampled from, "Far Away" by Lost Radiance Creative Commons Licence
Published on Nov 12, 2015 Scientists have discovered a new exoplanet that is located 39 light-years from Earth, making it the closest Earth-sized exoplanet yet discovered. Learn more: Video produced and edited by Melanie Gonick/MIT Additional imagery courtesy of Emily Heisted, Zach Berta-Thompson, Jonathan Irwin, Dana Berry and Chris Gunn/NASA Music sampled from, "Far Away" by Lost Radiance Creative Commons Licence Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
Artist’s impression of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri,
the closest star to the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
ESOcast 91 Light: VLT to search for planets around Alpha Centauri 4K UHD from ESO Observatory on Vimeo.
Published on Aug 24, 2016 Big news! Astronomers have confirmed that there's an exoplanet orbiting the nearest star to the Sun:
Proxima Centauri. And better than that, this world is located within the star's habitable zone,
which means that there could be liquid water on its surface, and even life. Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
Artist’s impression of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri.
The double star Alpha Centauri AB is visible to the upper right of Proxima itself.
Credit: ESO
Infographic comparing the orbit of the planet around Proxima Centauri (Proxima b)
with the same region of the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser/G. Coleman
A view of the southern skies over the ESO 3.6-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile,
showing the location of Proxima Centauri in the sky.
Credit: Y. Beletsky (LCO)/ESO/ESA/NASA/M. Zamani
Published on Aug 24, 2016 Dr Guillem Anglada gives the first remote Cool Worlds video to explain the very special discovery
announced today by his team - a planet orbiting our nearest star. Dr Guillem Anglada walks you through the
journey of discovery and what this detection means to him. Make sure you check out the Pale Red Project website below! Links from the video: - Pale Red Project: Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
An image of the circum-stellar disk around HD 207129. The three circled objects are background objects and are not part of the disk.
Image: Hubble Space Telescope, Glenn Schneider et al 2016.
A is the observed image of HD 207917. B is the best-fit debris ring model of the same star. Image: Hubble, G. Schneider et. al. 2016.
A circumstellar disk of debris around a mature stellar system could indicate the presence of Earth-like planets. Credit: NASA/JPL
HUBBLE DETECTS A PLANET AROUND BINARY STAR SYSTEM
This artist's illustration shows a planet circling a pair of distant red dwarf stars,
representing the the system OGLE-2007-BLG-349 system, about 8,000 lightyears from Earth.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).
The Hubble Space Telescope. Image: NASA
Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b.
Credit: Ron Miller
Artist’s impression of what the rings around J1407b would look like from Earth if they were placed around Saturn.
The rings can be seen above the Old Leiden Observatory.
Credit: M. Kenworthy / Leiden University
Artist's impression of comets plunging into the star HD 172555, which was observed using the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit:
Artist’s concept of a collision that is believed to have taken place in the HD 172555 star system between a moon-sized object and a Mercury-sized planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist’s concept of circumstellar disk of debris, which the HD 172555 star system is known to have. Credit: NASA
Artist's impression of a yellowish star being orbited by an extra-solar planet. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
This illustration compares the four planets detected around the nearby star tau Ceti (top) and the inner planets of our solar system (bottom). Credit: Fabo Feng/CAR/Univ. of Hertfordshire
Artist’s impression of the Tau Ceti system, based on data retrieved in 2012. Credit: J. Pinfield/Univ. of Hertfordshire
Recent studies have shown that rocky planets orbiting red dwarf stars will be tidally-locked and subject to intense radiation, reducing their chances of being habitable. Credit: M. Weiss/CfA
This artist's impression shows the temperate planet Ross 128 b, with its red dwarf parent star in the background. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
This artist’s impression shows the temperate planet Ross 128b, with its red dwarf parent star in the background. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
This artist’s impression video shows the temperate planet Ross 128 b along with its red dwarf parent star. This planet, which lies only 11 light-years from Earth, was found by a team using ESO’s unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument. The new world is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected after Proxima b. It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star, which may increase the likelihood that this planet could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to search for biomarkers in this planet’s atmosphere. More information and download options:
This zoom video sequence takes the viewer towards the sprawling constellation of Virgo (The Virgin). The first thing we encounter on our journey is the faint red dwarf star Ross 128, just 11 light-years from the Earth and the closest object in the constellation of Virgo. This star is orbited by the Earth-mass temperate planet Ross 128 b. More information and download options: Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Nick Risinger More information and download options:
A temperate planet has been discovered only 11 light-years from Earth by a team using ESO’s unique planet-hunting HARPS instrument. The new world has the designation Ross 128 b and is now the second-closest temperate planet to be detected after Proxima b. It is also the closest planet to be discovered orbiting an inactive red dwarf star, which may increase the likelihood that this planet could potentially sustain life. Ross 128 b will be a prime target for ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will be able to search for biomarkers in the planet's atmosphere. This short video explains the discovery and its significance. The video is available in 4K UHD. The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. More information and download options: Subscribe to ESOcast in iTunes! Receive future episodes on YouTube by pressing the Subscribe button above or follow us on Vimeo: Watch more ESOcast episodes: Find out how to view and contribute subtitles for the ESOcast in multiple languages, or translate this video on YouTube: Credit: ESO. Editing: Nico Bartmann. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Rosa Jesse, Nicole Shearer and Richard Hook. Music: Music written and performed by STAN DART (www.stan-dart.com). Footage and photos: ESO, Digitized Sky Survey 2, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), L. Calçada, M. Kornmesser, A. Santerne, ACe Consortium. Directed by: Nico Bartmann. Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen. Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
Planet Found! Ross 128 Update for 11/16/2017
This is part of my continuing coverage of the star Ross 128, a SETI candidate and recently found to host an earth-sized planet. Patereon Music: Cylinder Eight by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license Source: Artist: Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License
This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. Credit: ESO/A. Müller et al.
Near infrared image of the PDS70 disk obtained with the SPHERE instrument. Credit: ESO/A. Müller, MPIA
Astronomers using the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope captured the first clear image of a planet caught in the act of forming in the dusty disc surrounding a young star. The young planet is carving a path through the primordial disc of gas and dust around the very young star PDS 70. The data suggest that the planet’s atmosphere is cloudy. The video is available in 4K UHD. The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. More information and download options: Subscribe to ESOcast in iTunes! Receive future episodes on YouTube by pressing the Subscribe button above or follow us on Vimeo: Watch more ESOcast episodes: Find out how to view and contribute subtitles for the ESOcast in multiple languages, or translate this video on YouTube: Credit: ESO Directed by: Nico Bartmann. Editing: Nico Bartmann. Web and technical support: Mathias André and Raquel Yumi Shida. Written by: Calum Turner and Mariya Lyubenova. Music: Tim Turusov (www.turusov.com). Footage and photos: ESO, UHD Team, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS, L. Calçada, spaceengine.org and M. Kornmesser. Executive producer: Lars Lindberg Christensen.
This sequence takes the viewer towards the southern constellation of Centaurus. We zoom in on the orange dwarf star PDS 70. The final shot shows the spectacular new image of the planet PDS 70b cleaving a path through the planet-forming material surrounding the young star. More information and download options: Credit: ESO, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS. Music: Astral electronic. Category Science & Technology License Standard YouTube License Music in this video Learn more Listen ad-free with YouTube Premium Song Solar Wind Artist Astral Electronic Album Way to Alpha Licensed by [Merlin] Danmark Music Group (on behalf of GLOBAL DIGITAL PUBLISHING INC); Danmark Music Group (Publishing), and 3 Music Rights Societies
Astronomers have used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to uncover a vast, complex dust structure, about 150 billion miles across, enveloping the young star HR 4796A. Image:NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)
The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a vast, complex dust structure surrounding the star HR 4769A. The bright, inner ring is well-known to astronomers, but the huge dust structure surrounding the whole system is a new discovery. Image: NASA/ESA/G. Schneider (Univ. of Arizona)
Artist impression of a sunset over KELT-9b, where the planet’s atmosphere is hot enough to vaporize heavy metals such as iron and titanium. Credit and ©: Denis Bajram
Artist’s impression of KELT-9b, an ultra-hot Jupiter that orbits a hot, young star about 650 light years from Earth. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
By examining KELT-9b during a transit, the team was able to observe spectra from its atmosphere. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist impression of a sunset over KELT-9b, where the planet’s atmosphere is hot enough to vaporize heavy metals such as iron and titanium. Credit and ©: Denis Bajram
The hunt for other planets in our galaxy has heated up in the past few decades, with 3869 planets being detected in 2,886 systems and another 2,898 candidates awaiting confirmation. Though the discovery of these planets has taught scientists much about the kinds of planets that exist in our galaxy, there is still much we do not know about the process of planetary formation.
This artist’s conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave
Labeled version of four of the twenty disks that comprise ALMA’s highest resolution survey of nearby protoplanetary disks. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) S. Andrews et al.; NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello
mage of the HL Tau planet-forming disk taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
In 2018, scientists announced the discovery of a extrasolar planet orbiting Barnard’s star, an M-type (red dwarf) that is just 6 light years away. Using the Radial Velocity method, the research team responsible for the discovery determined that this exoplanet (Barnard’s Star b) was at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth and experienced average surface temperatures of about -170 °C (-274 °F) – making it both a “Super-Earth” and “ice planet”.
The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth — a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky.. This artist’s impression pans over the surface of this freezing, shadowy world. More information and download options: Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Artist’s impression of Barnard’s Star and its confirmed exoplanet (Barnard b) compared to the Solar System. Credit: Edward Guinan, Scott Engle / Villanova University.
The nearest single star to the Sun hosts an exoplanet at least 3.2 times as massive as Earth -- a so-called super-Earth. Data from a worldwide array of telescopes, including ESO’s planet-hunting HARPS instrument, have revealed this frozen, dimly lit world. The newly discovered planet is the second-closest known exoplanet to the Earth and orbits the fastest moving star in the night sky. The video is available in 4K UHD. The ESOcast Light is a series of short videos bringing you the wonders of the Universe in bite-sized pieces. The ESOcast Light episodes will not be replacing the standard, longer ESOcasts, but complement them with current astronomy news and images in ESO press releases. This video is available for download in various formats on:
Astronomers have discovered, for the first time, moons forming in the disk of debris around a large exoplanet. Astronomers have suspected for a long time that this is how larger planets—like Jupiter in our own Solar System—get their moons. It’s all happening around a very young star named PDS 70, about 370 light years away in the constellation Centaurus.
The artist conception shows a newly formed star surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Debris coalesces to create rocky 'planetesimals' that collide and grow to eventually form planets. The results of this study show that small planets form around stars with a wide range of heavy element content suggesting that their existence might be widespread in the galaxy. Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave
This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. This image is from a July 2018 study. Credit: ESO/A. Müller et al.
This is a composite image of PDS 70. Comparing new ALMA data to earlier VLT observations, astronomers determined that the young planet designated PDS 70 c has a circumplanetary disk, a feature that is strongly theorized to be the birthplace of moons. CREDIT: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) A. Isella; ESO
Radio astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes in Chile have found a disk of gas and dust (left) around exoplanet PDS 70 c, a still-forming gas giant that was obscured from view in the 2018 infrared image (right) that first revealed its sister planet, PDS 70 b. CREDIT: A. Isella, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
ALMA alone can’t do the kind of work needed to study circumplanetary disks and moon formation. The image above shows how multiple instruments are used to find the locations of both planets and their rings and trailing features. Image Credit: Isella et. al. 2019.
The study of exoplanets has matured considerably in the last ten years. During this time, the majority of the over 4000 exoplanets that are currently known to us were discovered. It was also during this time that the process has started to shift from the process of discovery to characterization. What’s more, next-generation instruments will allow for studies that will reveal a great deal about the surfaces and atmospheres of exoplanets.
Artist’s impression of an exoplanet atmosphere reacting from interaction with its star. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STSci)
Direct image of exoplanets around the star HR8799 using a Vortex coronagraph on a 1.5m portion of the Hale telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory
Surface features could be more discernible using a new method developed at Caltech. Credit: IAU/L. Calçada
Earth-like planets. Image Credit: JPL
These images show some of the exoplanet host stars with companion stars (B, C) that were found during the project. The images are RGB composite images taken with the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) in the y- (960 nm), i- (760 nm), and g-band (480 nm). The image in the middle shows a hierarchical triple star system. Image: Mugrauer, PanSTARRS
Left: The mass of the detected companions, plotted over their projected separation (sep) to the exoplanet host stars. White dwarf companions, identified in this survey, are shown as white filled circles, with an assumed mass of 0.6?M? Right: The distribution of the derived spectral types (SpT) of all companions, detected in this survey. Image Credit: M. Mugrauer, 2019. He also characterized the types and numbers of stars in these systems.
This is HIP116454 in the Pisces constellation. It’s a K-type main sequence star, also known as a K dwarf. It’s about 200 light years away, and has a white dwarf companion star (B in this image.) It also has at least one exoplanet, HIP116454 b, (not shown) a planet 12 times as massive as Earth. Image Credit: Mugrauer, Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
This triple star system is in the constellation Leo, and is about 800 light years away. The bright star on the left is the planetary host star, A is the first companion star, while C, a faint red star, is the second companion star. Image Credit: Mugrauer, PanSTARRS.
For example, thanks to new data obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have learned more about a new class of exoplanet known as “super-puff” planets. Planets in this class are essentially young gas giants that are comparable in size to Jupiter but have masses that are just a few times greater than that of Earth. This results in their atmospheres having the density of cotton candy, hence the delightful nickname!
The three giant planets orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler 51 compared to some of the planets in our solar system. Credits: NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak and J. Olmsted (STScI)
Artist’s illustration of the newfound gas-giant planet GJ 3512b, which circles a red dwarf star. Credit: Guillem Anglada-Escude—IEEC/Science-wave, using SpaceEngine.org (CC BY 4.0)
Mini Neptunian planets range in size from about 1.5 to 4 times the size of Earth and have a rocky core and puffy gaseous shell of varying thickness. Credit: Geoff Marcy
A full scale Mockup of the James Webb Telescope at the South by South West convention in Austin Texas.
From top to bottom: The plentiful M dwarfs or red dwarfs; the less plentiful K dwarfs; the relatively uncommon G-type star, like our Sun. The graphic compares the stars in terms of several important variables. The habitable zones, potentially capable of hosting life-bearing planets, are wider for hotter stars. The longevity for red dwarf M stars can exceed 100 billion years. K dwarf ages can range from 15 to 45 billion years. And, our Sun only lasts for 10 billion years. The relative amount of harmful radiation (to life as we know it) that stars emit can be 80 to 500 times more intense for M dwarfs relative to our Sun, but only 5 to 25 times more intense for the orange K dwarfs. Red dwarfs make up the bulk of the Milky Way’s population, about 73%. Sunlike stars are merely 6% of the population, and K dwarfs are at 13%. When these four variables are balanced, the most suitable stars for potentially hosting advanced life forms are K dwarfs. Credits: NASA, ESA and Z. Levy (STScI)
Tidally-locked exoplanets may be very common around red dwarf (M-dwarf) stars because of their close orbits. Image Credit: M. Weiss/CfA
his is an artist’s impression of the well-known TRAPPIST-1 system, a red dwarf that hosts 7 exoplanets. Thought the planets are all terrestrial planets, and three of them are in the habitable zone, the observed flaring from the TRAPPIST-1 star means life is unlikely. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Artist’s illustration of Epsilon Eridani and two exoplanets. EE is a K-dwarf star that’s only 10.5 light years from the Sun. It may host exoplanets, but their existence is controversial. Epsilon Eridani is young, only a billion years old, and it’s undergoing a tumultuous youth at this age. But it’ll calm down eventually, and could be a stable, hospitable star for tens of billions of years. Image Credit: By NASA, ESA, G. Bacon – Public Domain, from wikipedia
Kepler 442 is a K-dwarf star hosting a rocky exoplanet about twice as massive as Earth. The planet is in the star’s habitable zone and is an object of intense interest. Artist’s illustration. Image Credit: By Ph03nix1986 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
At present, scientists can only look for planets beyond our Solar System using indirect means. Depending on the method, this will involve looking for signs of transits in front of a star (Transit Photometry), measuring a star for signs of wobble (Doppler Spectroscopy), looking for light reflected from a planet’s atmosphere (Direct Imaging), and a slew of other methods.
The LOFAR ‘superterp’, part of the core of the extended telescope located in the Netherlands. Credit: LOFAR/ASTRON
mages from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope showing the auroras at Jupiter. Credit: NASA/CXC/UCL/W.Dunn et al (x-ray); NASA/STScI (optical)
Artist’s impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Artist’s impression showing several of the planets orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1. Credit: ESO
An artist’s illustration of a hypothetical exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/G. Bacon (STScI)
Using the Dutch-led Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, astronomers have discovered unusual radio waves coming from the nearby red dwarf star GJ1151. The radio waves bear the tell-tale signature of aurorae caused by an interaction between a star and its planet. The radio emission from a star-planet interaction has been predicted for over thirty-years but this is the first time astronomers have been able to discern its signature. This method, only possible with a sensitive radio telescope like LOFAR, opens the door to a new way of discovering exoplanets in the habitable zone and studying the environment they exist in. 'Coherent radio emission from a quiescent red dwarf indicative of star–planet interaction' is published in Nature Astronomy on 17 February 2020: DOI:
Astronomers like observing distant young stars as they form. Stars are born out of a molecular cloud, and once enough of the matter in that cloud clumps together, fusion ignites and a star begins its life. The leftover material from the formation of the star is called a circumstellar disk.
This is the sharpest image ever taken by ALMA — sharper than is routinely achieved in visible light with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. With young stars like this one, and CI Tau, the observations reveal substructures within the disc that have never been seen before and even show the possible positions of planets forming in the dark patches within the system.In this picture the features seen in the HL Tauri system are labelled. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
This study used data from the Disk Substructures at High Angular Resolution (DSHARP) project. DSHARP uses ALMA to study nearby bright circumstellar disks (also called protoplanetary disks). According to the website, DSHARP is “designed to assess the prevalence, forms, locations, sizes, and amplitudes of small-scale substructures in the distributions of the disk material and how they might be related to the planet formation process.” DSHARP is surveying 20 bright, nearby, large protoplanetary disks. Image Credit: DSHARP
Three of the dishes that make up the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimter Array (ALMA). Image Credit: H. Calderón – ALMA (ESO/NRAO/NAOJ)
The column on the left shows gas distribution in five of the circumstellar debris disks in the study. On the right are measurements for gas in those disks in different velocity channels. Those images show “velocity kinks.” Image Credit: C. Pinte et al, 2020.
An artist’s illustration of young gas giants forming in the circumstellar debris disk around a young star. Image Credit: NRAO / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello
Thanks to the success of the Kepler mission, we know that there are multitudes of exoplanets of a type called “Hot Jupiters.” These are gas giants that orbit so close to their stars that they reach extremely high temperatures. They also have exotic atmospheres, and those atmospheres contain a lot of strangeness, like clouds made of aluminum oxide, and titanium rain.
Predicted cloud altitudes and compositions for a range of temperatures common on hot Jupiter planets. The range, in Kelvin, corresponds to about 800-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit, or 427-1,927 degrees Celsius. (UC Berkeley image by Peter Gao)
This true-color image of Titan, taken by the Cassini spacecraft, shows the moon’s thick, hazy atmosphere. Though this study is mostly concerned with the atmospheres of Hot Jupiters, it also extends to other bodies with significant atmospheres, like Titan. Credit: NASA
Cloud map of Kepler-7b (left) in comparison to Jupiter (right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT
This artist’s view shows the hot Jupiter exoplanet 51 Pegasi b, the prototypical Hot Jupiter. In 1997, this was the first exoplanet found around a normal, main sequence star. Twenty years later astronomers found evidence of water in its atmosphere. Image Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39719418"> By ESO/M. Kornmesser/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org) – ESO website, CC BY 4.0,
Artist’s concept of the hot Jupiter WASP-121b, which presents the best evidence yet of a stratosphere on an exoplanet. It’s hot enough to boil some metals, and scientists found evidence of iron, vanadiaum oxide, and titanium oxide in its stratosphere. Credit: Bristol Science Centre/University of Exeter
The Moon is tidally locked to the Earth, which means that it always shows one face to our planet. In fact, this is the case for most the large moons in the Solar System. What's the process going on to make this happen? Support us at:Support us at: Follow us on Tumblr: : More stories at Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com /Karla Thompson - @karlaii Chad Weber - Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray”
Website of the Carl Sagan Institute
In the past few decades, the number of planets discovered beyond our Solar System has grown exponentially. To date, a total of 4,158 exoplanets have been confirmed in 3,081 systems, with an additional 5,144 candidates awaiting confirmation. Thanks to the abundance of discoveries, astronomers have been transitioning in recent years from the process of discovery to the process of characterization. In particular, astronomers are developing tools to assess which of these planets could harbor life. Recently, a team of astronomers from the Carl Sagan Institute (CSI) at Cornell University designed an environmental “decoder” based on the color of exoplanet surfaces and their hosts stars. In the future, this tool could be used by astronomers to determine which exoplanets are potentially-habitable and worthy of follow-up studies.
Artist’s impression of of Kepler-1649c orbiting around its host star. Credit: NASA’s Ames Research Center/Daniel Rutter
Artist’s depiction of the Morgan-Keenan spectral diagram, showing how stars differ in colors as well as size. Credit: Wikipedia Commons
An artist’s concept of a rocky world orbiting a red dwarf star. (Credit: NASA/D. Aguilar/Harvard-Smithsonian center for Astrophysics).
For centuries, human beings have speculated about the existence of planetary systems (much like our own) orbiting other stars. However, it has only been in the past few decades that scientists have been able to detect and study these distant worlds. To date, astronomers have used various methods to confirm the existence of 4,422 extrasolar planets in 3,280 star systems, with an additional 7,445 candidates awaiting confirmation.
When space objects pass in front of other space objects, we call that a transit. And it turns out, they’re not just fun to watch, they helped us figure out our place in the cosmos. Support us at: More stories at: Twitter: @universetoday Facebook: Instagram - What Fraser's Watching Playlist: Our Book is out! Audio Podcast version: ITunes: RSS: Sign up to my weekly email newsletter: Support us at:Support us at: Follow us on Tumblr: : More stories at Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com /Karla Thompson - @karlaii Chad Weber - Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 Music: Left Spine Down - “X-Ray”
This artist’s impression shows the planet orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). Credit: NASA
The Green Bank Telescope monitoring the galaxy for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Credit: UC Berkeley
This artist’s impression shows the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
Astronomers have watched the young binary star system SVS 13 for decades. Astronomers don’t know much about how planets form around proto-binary stars like SVS 13, and the earliest stages are especially mysterious. A new study based on three decades of research reveals three potentially planet-forming disks around the binary star.
Cartoon model of the system. The red-blue colours indicate the motion of the gas. (Red – away from us, blue – towards us.) Image Credit: University of Manchester.
This image from the study shows 0.9 mm radio emissions from the young protobinary SVS 13. The two stellar components are named VLA 4B and VLA4A. The pair are about 90 astronomical units apart. Image Credit: Díaz-Rodríguez et al. 2022.
This figure from the study highlights what appear to be the spiral arms of a disk surrounding SVS 13 and feeding material into the two smaller disks. The image on the right is the same as on the left but with different intensities to highlight the arms. S1 and S2 are pretty clearly defined spirals, but for S3, it is unclear whether it is a spiral arm or a feature of the northern part of the circumbinary disk. Image Credit: Díaz-Rodríguez et al. 2022.
WE’ve found thousands of exoplanets in the last couple of decades. We’ve discovered exoplanets unlike anything in our own Solar System. But even with all we’ve found, it seems like there’s more and more to discover. Space scientists of all types are always working on the next generation of missions, which is certainly true for exoplanets. Chinese researchers are developing an idea for an exoplanet-detecting array of space telescopes that acts as an interferometer. But it won’t only detect them. The array will use direct imaging to characterize distant exoplanets in more detail.
This image was taken during a time-lapse set at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA.) ALMA is probably the most well-known astronomical interferometer. An interferometer works by capturing images and data from multiple dishes or telescopes in different positions. The images are then combined into a single image with much higher resolution, and sensitivity than would be obtained from a single dish or telescope. Image Credit: ESO/ALMA.
The James Webb Telescope had to be folded up to fit into its rocket, then unfolded in space. That type of complexity is expensive and risky. An interferometer made of multiple small telescopes avoids this type of complexity. Credits: NASA/Chris Gunn
This is a map of every star within 50 light-years visible to the naked eye from Earth. There are 133 stars marked on this map. Most of these stars are very similar to the Sun, and there are probably many Earth-like planets around these stars. There are roughly 1300 star systems within this volume of space containing 1800 stars, so this map only shows the brightest 10% of all the star systems. Most of the fainter stars are red dwarfs. Image Credit: Institute for Computational Cosmology, Durham University.
The interferometer’s location is critical for good results. “The mission orbit is crucial for the exoplanet exploration by using an array telescope. The ideal mission orbit should keep away from the electromagnetic interference in the vicinity of the Earth and operate in a relatively clean dynamic environment to reduce the magnitude and frequency of orbit maintenance,” the authors explain in their paper. For those reasons, the team has settled on the Sun-Earth L2 halo orbit, home of the James Webb, Gaia, and other space observatories.
Fraser Cain 287K subscribers Lagrange Points. Stable spots in space that you just can’t stop thinking about. What spacecraft work best in which places? What are some amazing ideas that could utilize these regions across the Solar System? In the last episode, I gave an overview of the Lagrange points, and then went into the details of spacecraft missions sent to L1, the perfect place to constantly observe the Sun, the Earth, or to block radiation coming from the Sun. The best place for a lunar elevator, or a spot to put a space station at the Moon. This week, we’re going to talk about L2 and L3, the other meta-unstable spots that you can park a spacecraft at. Our Book is out! Audio Podcast version: ITunes: RSS: What Fraser's Watching Playlist: Weekly email newsletter: Universetoday's youtube channel Sign up to my weekly email newsletter: Weekly Space Hangout: Astronomy Cast: Support us at:Support us at: Follow us on Tumblr: More stories at ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow us on Twitter: @universetoday Like us on Facebook: Instagram - Support us at:Support us at: Instagram - Team: Fraser Cain - @fcain / frasercain@gmail.com /Karla Thompson - @karlaii Chad Weber - Chloe Cain - Instagram: @chloegwen2001 References: A Tour Of The Lagrange Points. Part 1 - Past And Future Missions To L1 The Lagrange Points Spacecraft trajectories to the L point of the Sun–Earth three-body problem Stero mission overview First Ever STEREO Images of the Entire Sun Project Dragonfly. A Laser-Powered Probe to Alpha Centauri Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Comprehensive Solar Wind Laboratory for Long-Term Solar Wind Measurements The herschel space telescope The largest infrared space telescope The Planck space telescope The gaia space telescope Thanks To Gaia We Now Know Exactly Where 1.7 Billion Stars Are In The Milky Way Spektr-RG to revive Russian space-based astronomy James Webb Space Telescope comes together Who Should Pay for the Mistakes on NASA’s Next Big Telescope? Nasa's JWST page Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the Universe The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Planetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) telescope The New Planet Hunters. Who Will Find Earth 2.0? Catching The Next Interstellar Asteroid Or Comet. ESA's Comet Interceptor Mission thena – Advanced Telescope for High-ENergy Astrophysics Lunar L2-Farside Exploration and Science Mission Concept with the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and a Teleoperated Lander/Rover (PDF) The Lunar Gateway Will be in a “Near-Rectilinear Halo Orbit” Why Is The Moon’s South Pole So Important? It’s All About Water
E FEATURELESS TRANSMISSION SPECTRA OF TWO SUPER-PUFF PLANETS
Jessica E. Libby-Roberts, 1 Zachory K. Berta-Thompson, 1 Jean-Michel Desert ´ , 2 Kento Masuda, 3, 4 Caroline V. Morley, 5 Eric D. Lopez,6, 7 Katherine M. Deck,8 Daniel Fabrycky, 9 Jonathan J. Fortney, 10 Michael R. Line, 11 Roberto Sanchis-Ojeda,12 and Joshua N. Winn13 1Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA 2Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, 1090 GE Amsterdam, Netherlands 3Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 4 Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA 4NASA Sagan Fellow 5The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA 6NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 8800 Greenbelt Rd, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA 7GSFC Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD 20771 8Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA 9Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA 10Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA 11School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85281, USA 12Netflix, 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032 USA 13Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, 4 Ivy Lane, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA
Report on the Effects of M dwarf magnetic fields on potentially habitable planets(PDF)
P The Newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies RINCIPIUM (PDF)
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Giant impacts stochastically change the internal pressures of terrestrial planets (PDF)
Visit to get started learning STEM for free, and the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium subscription. #jwst #LHS475b #astrophysics - Lustig-Yaeger et al. (2022; discovery paper of LHS 475b,(PDF) JWST observing proposal document for project 1981 studying planets around red dwarf stars: (PDF) NASA press release about LHS 475b: My previous video on WASP-39b: @JamesDavenport vlogs from this year's AAS conference in Seattle: More about the @NASAAmes TESS mission: The TESS Object of Interest catalogue: TOI 901 (TESS data of candidate planet confirmed as LHS 475b by JWST): Exoplanet census (for the plot of planet size against orbit distance, hit "click to expand" at the bottom of the page):
JWST's weekly observing schedule:
MAST: Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes
Twitter bot for JWST current observations:
00:00 - Introduction 00:24 - Announced at AAS conference in Seattle last week 00:58 - Where in the sky is LHS 475b? 01:34 - How they knew where to look with JWST (the TESS mission) 03:18 - Why they care about planets around red dwarf stars 05:07 - What data did they take with JWST? 05:58 - What that data tells us about LHS 475b 09:01 - The atmosphere of LHS 475b - how JWST reveals this 10:19 - What is LHS 475b's atmosphere made of? 13:52 - How we could work out which atmosphere model is right 14:30 - What this discovery means for exoplanet studies 15:32 - Brilliant 16:57 - Bloopers
