China is hatching a plan to find Earth 2.0

A satellite will scour the Milky Way for exoplanets orbiting stars just like the Sun.

China is planning its first space mission to survey the skies for exoplanets similar to Kepler-186f, an Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star (artist’s impression). Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Cosmic Milestone: NASA Confirms 5,000 Exoplanets

The count of confirmed exoplanets just ticked past the 5,000 mark, representing a 30-year journey of discovery led by NASA space telescopes.

What do planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, look like? A variety of possibilities are shown in this illustration. Scientists discovered the first exoplanets in the 1990s. As of 2022, the tally stands at just over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Liquid metal, ruby and sapphire could rain down on huge exoplanet

Hot and cold: artist's impression of the exoplanet WASP-121b and its host star. (Courtesy: NASA, ESA, and G Bacon (STSci))

First Look at an Unusual Exoplanet’s Atmosphere

AAS Nova reports on a “super-puff” exoplanet that’s nearly 15 times less dense than Jupiter.

A visualization of HIP 41378 f, a gaseous planet located 347 light-years from Earth. NASA Exoplanet Catalog

NASA Will Find 12,519 New Alien Planets By 2024 Including ‘Dozens Similar To Earth’s Size’ Say Scientists

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New Planet Discovered Around Proxima Centauri, Star Nearest The Sun

A new instrument on a powerful telescope has enabled astronomers to discover another planet around our nearest stellar neighbor.

An artist's concept of Proxima d, the third candidate planet orbiting our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. ESO / L. Calçada

55 Cancri e: Skies Sparkle Above a Never-Ending Ocean of Lava

A global ocean of lava under sparkling, silicate skies reflecting the lava below: what better choice for an extreme vacation? Planet Janssen, or 55 Cancri e, orbits a star called Copernicus only 41 light years away. The molten surface is completely uninhabitable, but you’ll ride safely above, taking in breathtaking views: the burning horizon, Janssen’s sister planet Galileo hanging in a dark sky, and curtains of glowing particles as you glide across the terminator to Janssen’s dark side. Book your travel now to the hottest vacation spot in the galaxy, 55 Cancri e.

Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech

Hubble Space Telescope Poster

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

TESS Space Telescope Poster

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Kepler Space Telescope Poster

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Spitzer Space Telescope Poster

The Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003, on a mission to become NASA’s premier infrared light observatory. It offered astronomers an unprecedented infrared view of the universe, allowing us to peer into regions of space that are hidden from optical telescopes with unprecedented clarity and sensitivity. One of NASA’s Great Observatories, Spitzer discovered a ring of Saturn, studied some of the farthest galaxies, and identified two of the most distant supermassive black holes ever discovered, among other accomplishments in its 16 years of operation.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers discover new planet orbiting two stars

A team of astronomers has discovered a new planet orbiting a pair of stars, the 10th “circumbinary” planet discovered by NASA’s Kepler Mission and a milestone for the 6-year-old spacecraft.

Artist’s impression of the Kepler-453 system showing the newly discovered planet on the right and the eclipsing binary stars on the left

KELT-7b: A hot Jupiter transiting a bright V=8.54 rapidly rotating F-star

Discovery light curve of KELT-7b from the KELT-N telescope. The light curve contains 7745 observations spanning 4.5 years, phase folded to the orbital period of P = 2.7347749 days. The red line represents the same data binned at 1 hr intervals in phase

Telescopes Team Up to Find Distant Uranus-Sized Planet Through Microlensing

The W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have made independent confirmations of an exoplanet orbiting far from its central star. The planet was discovered through a technique called gravitational microlensing. This finding opens a new piece of discovery space in the extrasolar planet hunt: to uncover planets as far from their central stars as Jupiter and Saturn are from our sun.

51 Pegasi b, the first planet discovered around a Sun-like star

An exceptional planetary system discovered in Cassiopeia

HARPS-N, the northern twin sister of the famous planet hunter HARPS, designed and built by an international consortium led by researchers at the Geneva University and installed at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo on the La Palma island, just unveiled an exceptional planetary system around HD219134. The star, a 5th magnitude K dwarf, slightly colder and less massive than our Sun, is so bright that we can follow her with a naked eye from dark skies, next to one leg of the W-shape Cassiopeia constellation, all year round in our boreal hemisphere. The cortege of planets is composed of three mostly rocky super-Earths and an outer giant planet, a configuration reminiscent of our own Solar System.

HD 219134 b: A transiting rocky planet in a multi-planet system at 6.5 pc from the Sun

NASA’s Spitzer Confirms Closest Rocky Exoplanet

Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of the nearest rocky planet outside our solar system, larger than Earth and a potential gold mine of science data.

This artist’s conception shows the silhouette of a rocky planet, dubbed HD 219134b, as it passes in front of its star. Source: NASA

New Method Finds Best Candidates for Telescope Time

If life exists on planets beyond our Solar System, its presence could be obscured by the haze and clouds in the planet’s atmosphere.

If starlight passing through a planetary atmosphere is blocked by clouds or haze, the resulting spectrum is flat and featureless, and no molecules or potential biomarkers are visible.

A Kepler’s Dozen: Small Habitable Zone Planets

Source: NASA

Of the 1,030 confirmed planets from Kepler, a dozen are less than twice the size of Earth and reside in the habitable zone of their host star. The sizes of the exoplanets are represented by the size of each sphere. These are arranged by size from left to right, and by the type of star they orbit, from the M stars that are significantly cooler and smaller than the sun, to the K stars that are somewhat cooler and smaller than the sun, to the G stars that include the sun. The sizes of the planets are enlarged by 25X compared to the stars. The Earth is shown for reference.