NASA Launches TESS the Exoplanet Hunter
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, will soon join NASA’s fleet of exoplanet-hunters that, so far, includes the Kepler, Hubble, and the Spitzer Space Telescopes. TESS was launched at 2251 UTC on April 18, 2018, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The space observatory is expected to survey about 85% of […]
Scientists Measure A Mighty Wind Blowing on Exoplanet
A pair of British scientists have found that winds of over 2 kilometers per second are blowing around HD 189733b, an exoplanet located about 63 light years away from us. According to the researchers, the exoplanet’s 2 kps wind speed is about seven times the speed of sound and is 20 times more than the […]
Calling ET: NASA Expands Search for Alien Life
The search for life beyond our own solar system has taken a major step forward with a new interdisciplinary research coalition devoted to the search for life in the cosmos. Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) will be made up of research teams from several NASA facilities, 10 U.S. universities and two research institutions, according […]
Astronomers May Have Spotted A Moon Orbiting an Extrasolar Planet
According to NASA, more than 1,000 extrasolar planets have been confirmed in recent years. There are also thousands more potential planets beyond our solar system that are waiting to be discovered. Now, an international group of astronomers think they may have found the first exomoon, or moon circling an exoplanet, some 1,800 light years away […]
Ultra-Light Planet Found Outside Solar System
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has discovered what appears to be the lightest planet ever to be directly observed outside of our Solar System. Astronomers made the discovery using the Very Large Telescope (VLT), located in Chile, which captured the faint object moving near a bright star about 300 light years from Earth. The possible […]