K2 tagged posts

A system of seven sweltering planets has been revealed by continued study of data from NASA’s retired Kepler space telescope: Each one is bathed in more radiant heat from their host star per area than any planet in our solar system. Also unlike any of our immediate neighbors, all seven planets in this system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

It is one of only a few planetary systems known to contain more than six verified planets or planet candidates...

Almost all blue supergiants shimmer in brightness because of waves on their surface. Blue supergiants are rock-and-roll: they live fast and die young. This makes them rare and difficult to study. Before space telescopes were invented, few blue supergiants had been observed, so our knowledge of these stars was limited...

The 44 confirmed planets and their approximate size class, orbits and surface temperatures. Credit: John Livingston Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-largest-haul-extrasolar-planets-japan.html#jCp

Confirmation of exoplanets and planetary systems may shed light on our place in the cosmos. Forty-four planets in solar systems beyond our own have been unveiled in one go, dwarfing the usual number of confirmations from extrasolar surveys, which is typically a dozen or less. The findings will improve our models of solar systems and may help researchers investigate exoplanet atmospheres. Novel techniques developed to validate the find could hugely accelerate the confirmation of more extrasolar planet candidates.

An international team of astronomers pooled data from U.S...