Honing in on exoplanets To date, astronomers have identified more than 1000 confirmed exoplanets using NASA’s Kepler space telescope alone. This is around half of the 2000 that are known to exist. Its findings are thanks to the innovative “transit” method, which measuring how much a star's...
Discuss the kinds of planetary systems we are finding around other stars Before the discovery of exoplanets, most astronomers expected that other planetary systems would be much like our own—planets following roughly circular orbits, with the most massive planets several AU from their parent star. ...
When we add dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, comets, Kuiper belt objects and the rest, the variety becomes truly amazing. Yet the solar system is just 1 of 400 now discovered planetary systems – most of which we already know to be quite different from our own neighbourhood....
What are exoplanets? What is planetary science? What is the planet Ceres? What is planetary astrophysics? What is planetary geology? What do asteroids do in space? What is an extragalactic planet? What is a planetoid? What kind of planet are Earth and Mars?
Many exoplanets are gas planets which orbit close to their stars. According to the Gemini Observatory, there are gas giants that cling to their stars. 9 It is not a case of size whether an object is a moon or a planet or an asteroid, the Moon Ganymede, which orbits around Jupiter is ...
What are exoplanets? What is the densest known star cluster? What is larger: a star system or a star cluster? What kind of orbit do comets have? What is the difference between nebulae and planetary nebulae? What space probes have headed to the Oort cloud?
What are exoplanets? What kind of galaxy is Andromeda? What is the name for the hypothetical sphere around the solar system? What is the asteroid belt behind Pluto? What is the surface of Saturn like? What is the gravity on Ceres?
But other nebula — such as the so-called "dark nebula" — are much dustier in their composition, and rather than glowing this dust has the effect of blocking the light from more distant objects beyond it. What are the different types of nebula? Image 1 of 5 (Image credit: NASA...
Astronomers have discovered twoexoplanetsorbiting TOI-1453, a star located about 250 light-years away. These planets, a super-Earth and a sub-Neptune, are among the most common types found in the galaxy, yet they are absent from our own solar system. The discovery, recently published inA...
Retrievals of hazy planets (see e.g. Arney et al. 2016), as well as ocean worlds, might also help us further quantify the science potential of LIFE for a variety of different planet types. Another interesting study would be to increase S/N and R to even higher values. This will not ...