exoplanet tagged posts

Our solar system has a king. The planet Jupiter, named for the most powerful god in the Greek pantheon, has bossed around the other planets through its gravitational influence. With twice the mass of Saturn, and 300 times that of Earth, Jupiter’s slightest movement is felt by all the other planets. Jupiter is thought to be responsible for the small size of Mars, the presence of the asteroid belt, and a cascade of comets that delivered water to young Earth.

Do other planetary systems have gravitational gods like Jupiter?

A team of astronomers led by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) has discovered a planet three times the mass of Jupiter in a distant ...

WASP167bKELT13b. Credit: Image courtesy of Keele University

Researchers led by a team at Keele University have discovered a new ‘Hot Jupiter’ exoplanet. The new giant planet was jointly discovered by a WASP/KELT survey collaboration, marking the first time an exoplanet has been discovered between two planet search groups. The exoplanet, WASP-167b/ KELT-13b, is several times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its parent star every two days. Its host star, WASP-176/KELT-13, is one of the hottest and most rapidly rotating stars known to host such a planet.

The Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) and the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) exoplanet surveys observed the host star between 2006 and 2013 using the WASP-South telescope and the KELT-South telescope at the South African ...

Planet 9 was most likely stolen by our sun 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: Image courtesy of Lund University

Through a computer-simulated study, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden show that it is highly likely that the so-called Planet 9 is an exoplanet. This would make it the first exoplanet to be discovered inside our own solar system. The theory is that our sun, in its youth some 4.5B yrs ago, stole Planet 9 from its original star.

“It is almost ironic that while astronomers often find exoplanets hundreds of light years away in other solar systems, there’s probably one hiding in our own backyard,” says Alexander Mustill, astronomer at Lund University. Stars are born in clusters and often pass by one another...