habitable zone tagged posts

This artist’s impression shows the exoplanet LHS 1140b, which orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth and may be the new holder of the title ‘best place to look for signs of life beyond the Solar System’. Using ESO’s HARPS instrument at La Silla, and other telescopes around the world, an international team of astronomers discovered this super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone around the faint star LHS 1140. This world is a little larger and much more massive than the Earth and has likely retained most of its atmosphere. Credit: ESO/spaceengine.org

Super-Earth LHS 1140b orbits in the habitable zone around a faint red dwarf star named LHS 1140, in the constellation of Cetus (The Sea Monster)...

This artist’s concept shows what each of the TRAPPIST-1 planets may look like, based on available data about their sizes, masses and orbital distances. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

With the discovery of seven earth-sized planets around the TRAPPIST-1 star 40 light years away, astronomers are looking to the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to help us find out if any of these planets could possibly support life. “If these planets have atmospheres, the James Webb Space Telescope will be the key to unlocking their secrets,” said Doug Hudgins, Exoplanet Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “In the meantime, NASA’s missions like Spitzer, Hubble, and Kepler are following up on these planets.”

“These are the best Earth-sized planets for the James Webb Space Telescope to characteriz...

An artist’s illustration depicts the interior of a low-mass star. Such stars have different interior structures than our Sun, so they are not expected to show magnetic activity cycles. However, astronomers have discovered that the nearby star Proxima Centauri defies that expectation and shows signs of a seven-year activity cycle. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

In August astronomers announced that the nearby star Proxima Centauri hosts an Earth-sized planet (called Proxima b) in its habitable zone. At first glance, Proxima Centauri seems nothing like our Sun. It’s a small, cool, red dwarf star only 1/10 as massive and 1/1000 as luminous as the Sun. However, new research shows that it is sunlike in one surprising way: it has a regular cycle of starspots.

Starspots (like sunspots) are dark blotches...

Representation of the interior of Enceladus with icy crust, ocean and solid core. ROB researchers think that Dione may also have a subsurface ocean. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

A subsurface ocean lies deep within Saturn’s moon Dione, according to new data from the Cassini mission to Saturn. Two other moons of Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, are already known to hide global oceans beneath their icy crusts, but a new study suggests an ocean exists on Dione as well. The researchers of the Royal Observatory of Belgium show gravity data from recent Cassini flybys can be explained if Dione’s crust floats on an ocean 100 kilometers below the surface. The ocean is several tens of kilometers deep and surrounds a large rocky core...