Giant exoplanet hunters: Look for debris disks
There's no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy—they're so distant and faint compared to their stars, it's hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have...
View ArticleExtremely massive exoplanet discovered in the Milky Way's bulge
(Phys.org)—As a result of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope observations of a microlensing event, astronomers have found an extremely massive alien world circling a star located in the Milky Way's bulge....
View ArticleObservations of a comet's first passage through the solar system reveal...
Comets are our most direct link to the earliest stages of the formation and evolution of the solar system. Only every few years is a new comet discovered that is making its first trip to the inner...
View ArticleLava or not, exoplanet 55 Cancri e likely to have atmosphere
Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star, such that the...
View ArticleAstronomers create most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy
Astronomers at ANU have created the most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing secrets of how it formed and how it is likely to evolve.
View ArticleA microlensing event seen from three positions in space
The path of a light beam will be bent by the presence of mass, an effect explained by General Relativity, and a massive body can therefore act like a lens - a so called "gravitational lens"– to distort...
View ArticleWhat stars will hatch from the Tarantula Nebula? NASA's flying observatory...
To have a full picture of the lives of massive stars, researchers need to study them in all stages – from when they're a mass of unformed gas and dust, to their often dynamic end-of-life explosions.
View ArticlePuzzling finding raises new questions about atmospheric physics of giant planets
The hottest point on a gaseous planet near a distant star isn't where astrophysicists expected it to be - a discovery that challenges scientists' understanding of the many planets of this type found in...
View ArticleResearch reveals more about TRAPPIST-1 planets, and the possibility of life
A series of four studies have shed new light on the properties of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, currently our most optimal hope for evidence of biological life beyond the Solar system.
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