Extrasolar Planets
Hubble Traces Subtle Signals of Water on Hazy Worlds 
Using the powerful eye of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, two teams of scientists have found faint signatures of water in the atmospheres of five distant planets.
Final Signs of Life on Terrestrial Planets Near the End of Their Habitable Lifetimes
The biosignatures of life on Earth do not remain static, but change considerably over the planet's habitable lifetime.
Sunny Outlook for NASA Kepler's Second Light
You may have thought that NASA's Kepler spacecraft was finished. Well, think again. A repurposed Kepler Space telescope may soon start searching the sky again.
Electrostatic Activation of Prebiotic Chemistry in Substellar Atmospheres
Charged dust grains in the atmospheres of exoplanets may play a key role in the formation of prebiotic molecules, necessary to the origin of life. Dust grains submerged in an atmospheric plasma become negatively charged and attract a flux of ions that are accelerated from the plasma.
New Theoretical Models Aid the Search for Earth-like Planets
Researchers from Bern have developed a method to simplify the search for Earth-like planets: By using new theoretical models they rule out the possibility of Earth-like conditions, and therefore life, on certain planets outside our solar system -- and limit their search by doing so.
Possible Climates on Terrestrial Exoplanets
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic observations, or to assess the probability of habitable worlds.
On the Radius of Habitable Planets
The conditions that a planet must fulfill to be habitable are not precisely known. However, it is comparatively easier to define conditions under which a planet is very likely not habitable.
Planet Packing in Circumbinary Systems
The recent discovery of planets orbiting main sequence binaries will provide crucial constraints for theories of binary and planet formation.
Runaway Greenhouse Effect on Exomoons Due to Irradiation From Hot, Young Giant Planets
The Kepler space telescope has detected transits of objects as small as the Earth's Moon, and moons as small as 0.2 Earth masses can be detected in the Kepler data by transit timing and transit duration variations of their host planets.
Detectability of Free Floating Planets in Open Clusters with JWST
Recent observations have shown the presence of extra-solar planets in Galactic open stellar clusters, as in the Praesepe (M44). These systems provide a favorable environment for planetary formation due to the high heavy-element content exhibited by the majority of their population.
Video: Kepler Exoplanet Orrery As of November 2013
This shows the relative sizes of the orbits and planets in the multi-transiting planetary systems discovered by Kepler up to Nov. 2013. The colors simply go by order from the star (the most colorful is the 7-planet system KOI-351). The terrestrial planets of the Solar System are shown in gray.
Modelling the globally-integrated spectral variability of the Archean Earth
The ongoing searches for exoplanetary systems have revealed a wealth of planets with diverse physical properties. Planets even smaller than the Earth have already been detected, and the efforts of future missions are placed on the discovery, and perhaps characterization, of small rocky exoplanets within the habitable zone of their stars.
Characterizing Distant Worlds with Asterodensity Profiling
Eclipsing systems, such as transiting exoplanets, allow one to measure the mean stellar density of the host star under various idealized assumptions. Asterodensity Profiling (AP) compares this density to an independently determined value in order to check the validity of the assumptions and ultimately extract useful information on the nature of the target system.
Detection of Potential Transit Signals in Sixteen Quarters of Kepler Mission Data
We present the results of a search for potential transit signals in four years of photometry data acquired by the Kepler Mission. The targets of the search include 111,800 stars which were observed for the entire interval and 85,522 stars which were observed for a subset of the interval.
Spectro-Thermometry of M dwarfs and their candidate planets: too hot, too cool, or just right?
We use moderate-resolution spectra of nearby late K and M dwarf stars with parallaxes and interferometrically determined radii to refine their effective temperatures, luminosities, and metallicities.
The Role of Carbon in Extrasolar Planetary Geodynamics and Habitability
he proportions of oxygen, carbon and major rock-forming elements (e.g. Mg, Fe, Si) determine a planet's dominant mineralogy. Variation in a planet's mineralogy subsequently affects planetary mantle dynamics as well as any deep water or carbon cycle.
1 in 5 Sun-like Stars Has Earth-size Planet in Habitable Zone
NASA's Kepler spacecraft, now crippled and its four-year mission at an end, nevertheless provided enough data to complete its mission objective: to determine how many of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets.
Scientists Discover the First Earth-Sized Rocky Planet
Astronomers have discovered the first Earth-sized planet outside the solar system that has a rocky composition like that of Earth. Kepler-78b whizzes around its host star every 8.5 hours, making it a blazing inferno and not suitable for life as we know it. The results are published in two papers in the journal Nature.
Carbon Worlds May be Waterless
Planets rich in carbon, including so-called diamond planets, may lack oceans, according to NASA-funded theoretical research.
Evidence for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet
The existence of water in extrasolar planetary systems is of great interest as it constrains the potential for habitable planets and life. Here, we report the identification of a circumstellar disk that resulted from the destruction of a water-rich and rocky, extrasolar minor planet.
Top stories from December.
Calendar
- 8 Dec: Exoplanets and Disks: Their Formation and Diversity
- 9 Dec: ASTROBIO 2013: An International Workshop on Astrobiology
- 9 Dec: AGU Fall Meeting
- 9 Dec: Falcon 9 Launch to Resupply the ISS
- 9 Dec: NASA Advisory Council Audit, Finance and Analysis Committee Meeting
- 9 Dec: NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee Meeting
- 10 Dec: Mars One Announces Plans for First Private Robotic Mission to Mars
- 10 Dec: NASA Advisory Council Technology and Innovation Committee Meeting
- 10 Dec: NASA Advisory Council Information Technology Infrastructure Committee Meeting
- 11 Dec: NASA Advisory Council Meeting
- * Submit Your Event | More Events *
Recent Articles
Masthead