TESS tagged posts

When our sun reaches the end of its life, it will expand to 100 times its current size, enveloping the Earth. Many planets in other solar systems face a similar doom as their host stars grow old. But not all hope is lost, as astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) have made the remarkable discovery of a planet’s survival after what should have been certain demise at the hands of its sun.

The Jupiter-like planet 8 UMi b, officially named Halla, orbits the red giant star Baekdu (8 UMi) at only half the distance separating the Earth and the sun...

A study led by researchers of the University of Liège and the CSIC—using observations from NASA’s TESS telescope—presents the detection of a system of two planets slightly larger than Earth orbiting a cold star in a synchronized dance. Named TOI-2096, the system is located 150 light-years from Earth.

The discovery is the result of a close collaboration between European and American universities and was made possible by the US space mission TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), which aims to find planets orbiting nearby bright stars.

“TESS is conducting an all-sky survey using the transit method, that is, monitoring the stellar brightness of thousands of stars in the search for a slight dimming, ...

Stars with less than half the mass of our sun are able to host giant Jupiter-style planets, in conflict with the most widely accepted theory of how such planets form, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) and University of Warwick researchers.

Gas giants, like other planets, form from disks of material surrounding young stars. According to core accretion theory, they first form a core of rock, ice and other heavy solids, attracting an outer layer of gas once this core is sufficiently massive (about 15 to 20 times that of Earth).

However, low-mass stars have low-mass disks that, models predict, would not provide enough material to form a gas giant in this way, or at least not quickly enough before the disk breaks up.

In the study, accepted for publica...

For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star. The stricken world appears destined to spiral closer and closer to its maturing star until collision and ultimate obliteration.

The discovery offers new insights into the long-winded process of planetary orbital decay by providing the first look at a system at this late stage of evolution.

Death-by-star is a fate thought to await many worlds and could be the Earth’s ultimate adios billions of years from now as our Sun grows older.

“We’ve previously detected evidence for exoplanets inspiraling toward their stars, but we have never before seen such a planet around an evolved star,” says Shreyas ...