Tag

Exoplanets

All articles tagged with #exoplanets

science5 days ago•3 min saved

Caltech Astronomer Killed at Home; Suspect Charged in Murder

A renowned Caltech astronomer, Carl Grillmair, who studied distant planets and the Milky Way, was shot and killed at his Llano home outside Los Angeles. Authorities arrested 29-year-old Freddy Snyder, charging him with Grillmair’s murder as well as related carjacking and burglary in other cases. Grillmair’s decades-long career included leadership at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center and NASA collaborations, earning a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2011 for a discovery related to water on a distant planet.

via The Guardian|

#astronomy #caltech #exoplanets

crime5 days ago•5 min saved

Caltech Astronomer Fatally Shot on Llano Porch; Suspect Charged

Prominent Caltech astrophysicist Carl Grillmair was fatally shot on his Llano porch in the Antelope Valley; a 29-year-old suspect, Freddy Snyder, was arrested and charged with murder, carjacking and burglary related to the case. Grillmair, a longtime IPAC researcher involved with the Hubble and Spitzer missions, was renowned for his work on the Milky Way’s structure and for identifying water on an exoplanet.

via Los Angeles Times|

#antelope-valley #caltech #carl-grillmair

science6 days ago•6 min saved

JWST Discovers Hydrogen Sulfide on Distant Super-Jupiters, Illuminating Planet-Formation Paths

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers detected hydrogen sulfide in the atmospheres of HR 8799’s inner gas giants (c, d, e), suggesting sulfur came from solid material in their birth disks and signaling a universal pattern of heavy-element enrichment during planet formation. The study also showcases a direct-imaging technique that could, in time, help study Earth-like worlds for biosignatures.

via The Daily Galaxy|

#exoplanets #hr-8799 #hydrogen-sulfide

astronomy9 days ago•50 min saved

Einstein’s relativity could veil a hidden population of binary-star exoplanets

Astronomers argue there may be hundreds to thousands of Tatooine‑like exoplanets in the Milky Way, but the observed scarcity of circumbinary worlds stems from a GR‑driven resonance in tight binary systems that destabilizes planetary orbits, combined with biases in Kepler/TESS detections that make these planets hard to find.

via Space|

#astronomy #binary-stars #circumbinary

science11 days ago•34 min saved

Ancient cave microbes in New Mexico thrive on unseen light

Microbes in Carlsbad Caverns toes the line between geology and biology, as cyanobacteria living on cave walls photosynthesize using near-infrared light that human eyes can’t see; the reflected light concentrates far from entrances, suggesting life could persist in ultra-dark, light-limited environments and offering clues for detecting life on other worlds, potentially guiding NASA’s future research with the James Webb Space Telescope.

via Yahoo|

#astrobiology #carlsbad-caverns #cyanobacteria

world11 days ago•3 min saved

Inside-Out Exoplanet System Upends Formation Theory

CHEOPS observations reveal four planets orbiting the red dwarf LHS 1903 far closer to their star than Mercury is to the Sun: two rocky super-Earths and two gaseous mini-Neptunes. The outermost planet, surprisingly rocky, challenges standard models that predict rocky worlds close in and gas giants farther out, suggesting an 'inside-out' assembly in which gas was depleted by inner planets or the atmosphere was stripped after formation. With a mass of about 5.8 Earth masses and a surface temperature around 60°C, it could be marginally habitable, and future JWST studies could probe its atmosphere.

via Dawn|

#cheops #exoplanets #habitability

science19 days ago•5 min saved

Ice-Cold Earth-Sized Exoplanet in Habitable Zone Sparks Debate

Astronomers identify HD-137010 b, an Earth-sized exoplanet about 1.2 times Earth’s mass in a 355-day orbit around a cool K-dwarf star (HD-137010). It may lie just inside its star’s habitable zone and receives less than a third of the energy Earth gets, suggesting surface temperatures around -68 to -85 °C. The planet has only a single observed transit from Kepler, so confirmation requires multiple transits and follow-up with future observatories (e.g., PLATO). A moderately CO2-rich atmosphere could allow liquid water, though a snowball climate is possible. The system could host additional planets, hinting at a solar-system-like architecture, and this discovery shows temperate, Earth-sized worlds around Sun-like stars can be detected via single transits; but further observations are needed to confirm HD-137010 b’s status.

via ScienceAlert|

#astronomy #exoplanets #habitable-zone

space-and-spaceflight22 days ago•17 min saved

Einsteinian Gravity Explains Why Circumbinary Planets Are So Rare

A new study shows general relativity alters the three-body dynamics around tight binary stars, progressively destabilizing circumbinary planets and helping explain their scarcity and the difficulty of detecting them.

via Gizmodo|

#circumbinary-planets #exoplanets #general-relativity

science23 days ago•16 min saved

Cave cyanobacteria harness near-infrared light, expanding the search for life in the cosmos

Scientists exploring Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico found cyanobacteria on cave walls that can photosynthesize using near-infrared light thanks to chlorophyll d and f, enabling energy capture in darkness and in cave zones possibly untouched for about 49 million years. This widens the known range of photosynthesis, implying red-dwarf–type stars could host life and helping to refine the search for habitable exoplanets with JWST by focusing on longer wavelengths and lower light levels where oxygen could signal life.

via BBC|

#astrobiology #caves #cyanobacteria

space28 days ago•74 min saved

ALMA reveals the chaotic teenage years of growing planets

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) as part of the Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS) survey captured 24 disks around young stars, showing complex rings, halos and asymmetries that indicate a turbulent, collision‑driven “teenage” phase of planet formation and offering new clues to how planetary systems evolve—including hints about our Solar System’s early history.

via Space|

#alma #arks #debris-disks

science1 month ago•4 min saved

NASA's Open-Source AI Flags 7,000 Exoplanet Candidates in TESS Sweep

NASA released ExoMiner++, an open-source AI trained on Kepler and TESS data, which identified more than 7,000 exoplanet candidates from the first TESS data run by analyzing transit signals to separate real planets from false positives; the model’s open availability on GitHub aims to accelerate discovery and collaboration ahead of future missions like the Roman Space Telescope.

via The Daily Galaxy|

#ai #exominer #exoplanets

space1 month ago•5 min saved

NASA's ExoMiner++ AI Expands Exoplanet Search Across Kepler and TESS

NASA’s ExoMiner++ AI, trained on both Kepler and TESS data, identified ~7,000 exoplanet candidates from TESS in its latest run, expanding on the earlier ExoMiner success that validated 370 exoplanets from Kepler. The tool is open-source on GitHub, enabling researchers to search freely for planets in the growing public data, with future work aimed at extracting signals directly from raw data and informing upcoming missions like the Roman Space Telescope.

via NASA Science (.gov)|

#ai #exominer #exoplanets

science1 month ago•9 min saved

Dark-Side Water Expands the Reach of Habitable Worlds

A Hebrew University study shows tidally locked exoplanets can maintain liquid water on their permanently day and night sides, expanding the traditional habitable zone and suggesting far more worlds could support life, with JWST observations aligning with the model.

via jpost.com|

#exoplanets #habitable-zone #james-webb-space-telescope

astronomy1 month ago•3 min saved

Metallic Disk Around Hidden Companion Dims a Sun-like Star

A Sun-like star J0705+0612 dramatically dimmed between September 2024 and May 2025 due to a giant, metal-rich cloud about 1.2 billion miles from the star. The cloud appears bound to a distant companion with a few Jupiter masses—potentially a brown dwarf, giant planet, or low-mass star—carrying a circumsecondary or circumplanetary disk. Gas moves with winds of metals such as calcium and iron, measured with the GHOST spectrograph, indicating a dynamic debris disk around the companion. The star is ~3,000 light-years away, and infrared excess suggests a disk in an older system, implying a late-stage collision may have produced the cloud. This rare observation shows mature planetary systems can experience dramatic, disk-driven obscurations.

via gizmodo.com|

#astronomy #debris-disk #exoplanets

space1 month ago•76 min saved

Colossal exomoon candidate could redefine the meaning of 'moon'

Astronomers using the GRAVITY instrument on the VLT detected a small but measurable wobble in the gas giant HD 206893 B’s orbit, implying a massive unseen companion — an exomoon potentially about 40% of Jupiter’s mass (roughly nine Neptune masses) orbiting at ~0.2 AU with a ~9‑month period and a ~60° inclination. If confirmed, it would be among the most massive moons known and could force a reevaluation of what defines a moon, while guiding future exomoon searches via astrometry.

via Space|

#astrometry #astronomy #exomoons