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    Astronomers just found a giant planet that shouldn’t exist

    June 13, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    artist's illustration of the newly discovered exoplanet and star
    Star TOI-6894 is just like many in our galaxy, a small red dwarf, and only ~20% of the mass of our Sun. Like many small stars, it is not expected to provide suitable conditions for the formation and hosting of a large planet.

    Scientists have discovered a giant planet orbiting a tiny red dwarf star, something they believed wasn’t even possible. The planet, TOI-6894b, is about the size of Saturn but orbits a star just a fifth the mass of our Sun. This challenges long-standing ideas about how big planets form, especially around small stars. Current theories can’t fully explain how such a planet could have taken shape. Even more fascinating, this cold planet may have a rare kind of atmosphere rich in methane or even ammonia something we’ve never seen in an exoplanet before.

    Star TOI-689...

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    Astronomers Find Far-flung “Super Earths” Are Not Farfetched

    April 25, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This artist's concept illustrates the results of a new study that measured the masses of many planets relative to the stars that host them
    Caption: This artist’s concept illustrates the results of a new study that measured the masses of many planets relative to the stars that host them, leading to new information about populations of planets in the direction of the bulge of the Milky Way. This study, published in the journal Science, shows that super-Earths are common and places them in context with gas giant planets.

    Credit: Westlake University

    A new study shows that planets bigger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are common outside the Solar System.

    An international team including astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) has announced the discovery of a planet about twice the size of Earth orbiting its star farther out than Saturn is to the sun.

    These results are another examp...

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    New Planet in Kepler-51 System discovered using James Webb Space Telescope, JWST

    December 5, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    illustration of star with three planets
    A fourth planet has been discovered in the Kepler-51 system using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The three previously known planets in the system, illustrated here,  are unusual ultra-low density “super-puff” planets. Credit: NASA, ESA, and L. Hustak, J. Olmsted, D. Player and F. Summers (STScI). All Rights Reserved.

    The unusual system of three ‘super puff’ planets has at least one more planet, revealed by its gravitational tug on other planets. An unusual planetary system with three known ultra-low density “super-puff” planets has at least one more planet, according to new research led by researchers from Penn State and Osaka University...

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    Astronomers discover a ‘Hot Neptune’ in a Tight Orbit

    November 27, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A dark planet, left, is shown in close orbit around its star, right; some of the planet's atmosphere is being blown outward by the star.
    Artist’s concept of “hot Neptune” TOI-3261 b.
    NASA/JPL-Caltech/K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC)

    A Neptune-sized planet, TOI-3261 b, makes a scorchingly close orbit around its host star. Only the fourth object of its kind ever found, the planet could reveal clues as to how planets such as these form.

    An international team of scientists used the NASA space telescope, TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), to discover the exoplanet, then made further observations with ground-based telescopes in Australia, Chile, and South Africa. The measurements placed the new planet squarely in the “hot Neptune desert”—a category of planets with so few members that their scarcity evokes a deserted landscape.

    The team, led by astronomer Emma Nabbie of the University of Southern Queensland, pu...

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