orbiting

An Earthlike planet may be orbiting in a dead star’s ‘habitable zone’

by

Planetary debris, including some objects the size of moons, may hint at a rocky exoplanet within the habitable zone of a stellar zombie, a new study suggests. The star in question is a white dwarf called WD1054–226, a cooling remnant of a star that exhausted all fuel at its core. If an exoplanet is confirmed … Read more

A New Planet Has Just Been Discovered Orbiting The Nearest Star to The Sun

by

What appears to be a teeny tiny alien world has just been found orbiting the Solar System’s closest stellar neighbor. The exoplanet candidate, named Proxima d, orbits a star named Proxima Centauri: a small, dim red dwarf star just 4.2 light-years from the Sun.   Amazingly, the exoplanet is just a quarter of the mass … Read more

3 newly discovered worlds risk doom orbiting too close to dying stars

by

Astronomers have spotted three new exoplanets orbiting dangerously close to their parent stars, on the brink of extinction.  The three exoplanets, named TOI-2337b, TOI-4329b and TOI-2669b, were discovered using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the W. M. Keck Observatory’s High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer (HIRES) in Hawaiʻi. “These planets are in such extreme places that … Read more

Streams of stars orbiting the Milky Way shed light on galaxy’s dark matter

by

Stellar groupings orbiting in the outskirts of the Milky Way shed new light on the evolution of our galaxy as well as the elusive dark matter that surrounds it. Scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science mapped a dozen associations of stars that orbit within the gaseous halo that envelopes our galaxy, the Milky Way. … Read more

Astronomers Have Detected a Mysterious, Dusty Object Erratically Dimming Its Star

by

There are a lot of unexplained objects out there in the Universe, and astronomers have just found another one – a strange, dusty object that may be causing its host star to dim by up to 75 percent.   Often, when we see something block out the light of its star it’s an exoplanet or … Read more

The Red Sky Paradox Will Make You Question Our Very Place in The Universe

by

On the grand cosmic scale, our little corner of the Universe isn’t all that special – this idea lies at the heart of the Copernican principle. Yet there’s one major aspect about our planet that’s peculiar indeed: Our Sun is a yellow dwarf.    Because our home star is what we know most intimately, it … Read more

Planets: An unexpected gas giant is orbiting a massive pair of stars

by

We thought that planets couldn’t form around stars with more than three times the mass of the sun, but planet b Cen (AB)b challenges the idea Space 8 December 2021 By Chen Ly The twin stars of the most massive planet-hosting star system to date, b Centauri, and its giant planet b Cen (AB)b ESO/Janson … Read more