red dwarf star tagged posts

A young planet whirling around a petulant red dwarf star is changing in unpredictable ways orbit-by-orbit...

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 illustration shows two Earth-sized planets, TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c, passing in front of their parent red dwarf star, which is much smaller and cooler than our sun. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope looked for signs of atmospheres around these planets. Credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/J. de Wit (MIT)

Using Hubble, astronomers have conducted the first search for atmospheres around temperate, Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system and found indications that increase the chances of habitability on 2 exoplanets. Specifically, they discovered that TRAPPIST-1b and TRAPPIST-1c, ~40 light-years away, are unlikely to have puffy, hydrogen-dominated atmospheres usually found on gaseous worlds.

“The lack of a smothering hydrogen-helium envelope increases the chances for habitability on these ...

The Milky Way in the 2MASS infrared survey, similar to Hubble observations of the sky colour (near-infrared). Here, the visible stars are mostly bright giant stars. Credit: The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/2mass/gallery/2mass_allskyatlas.jpg

The Leiden Uni students show there are 58 billion dwarf stars, of which 7% reside in the outer regions of our Galaxy. This result is the most comprehensive model ever for the distribution of these stars. The Milky Way has a prominent, relatively flat disc with closely spaced bright stars, and a halo, a sphere of stars with a much lower density around it. Astronomers assume that the halo is the remnant of the first galaxies that fused together to form our Galaxy.

To find out exactly what the Milky Way looks ...