extrasolar planets tagged posts

Recent advances in astronomical observations have found a significant number of extrasolar planets that can sustain surface water, and the search for extraterrestrial life on such planets is gaining momentum. A team of astrobiologists has proposed a novel approach for detecting life on ocean planets. By conducting laboratory measurements and satellite remote sensing analyses, they have demonstrated that the reflectance spectrum of floating vegetation could serve as a promising biosignature...

Astronomers using the VLBA have produced a full, 3-D view of a binary star system with a planet orbiting one of the stars. Their achievement promises important new insights into the process of planet formation.

By precisely tracing a small, almost imperceptible, wobble in a nearby star’s motion through space, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-like planet orbiting that star, which is one of a binary pair. Their work, using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), produced the first-ever determination of the complete, 3-dimensional structure of the orbits of a binary pair of stars and a planet orbiting one of them...

New study suggests that the nightsides of hot Jupiters share clouds made of minerals...

This is an artist’s impression of the planets orbiting K2-187.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt, T. Pyle (IPAC), UTokyo/J. Livingston

An international team of astronomers using a combination of ground and space based telescopes have reported more than 100 extrasolar planets (here after, exoplanets) in only three months. These planets are quite diverse and expected to play a large role in developing the research field of exoplanets and life in the Universe.

Exoplanets, planets that revolve around stars other than the Sun, have been actively researched in recent years. One of the reasons is the success of the Kepler Space Telescope, which launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets...