Astronomers Spot a Massive Brown Dwarf Hotter Than the Sun
Astronomers recently spotted one of the most massive brown dwarfs known, an object between 75 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter with a beyond-scalding dayside temperature of 8,000 K…
Watch a video of an exoplanet orbiting its star — made from 17 years of observations
It’s rare that we get to see exoplanets themselves. Most often, planets in other star systems are too small and too dim to be directly detected, so astronomers infer their…
See 17 Years of an Exoplanet’s Orbit in One Captivating GIF
Beta Pictoris b is a young exoplanet about 12 times as massive as Jupiter, with an orbit nearly twice as long. Now, a timelapse video of the planet’s nearly 23-year…
Hubble watches an extreme exoplanet being stripped by its star
Of the many strange exoplanets discovered to date, one of the most extreme has to be a world called AU Mic b. This Neptune-sized planet orbits close enough to its…
New Image Reveals Dusty Clumps That Could Be the Source of Gas Giants
Researchers think they’ve gotten a glimpse at how gas giants like Jupiter form, thanks to a remarkable image of a distant star system. First Full-Color Images From Webb Space Telescope…
‘Mind Blowing’ Trojan Planet Suspected of Sharing the Same Orbit as Its Sibling
A group of radio telescopes in the Chilean desert was aimed at a young star system 400 light years away when it detected something unusual: a cloud of debris chasing…
Astronomers Baffled by ‘Planet That Shouldn’t Exist’
The search for planets outside our Solar System – exoplanets – is one of the most rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Over the past few decades, more than 5,000 exoplanets…
Tatooine-like exoplanet orbits two stars in rare astronomical discovery
Anyone who has watched Star Wars has likely found themselves enchanted by the views from Luke’s home planet of Tatooine, with its pair of suns visible in the sky over…
Astronomers discover Earth-sized exoplanet covered in volcanoes
Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized planet that is highly volcanically active — an unusual finding that means it could possibly support life. The newly discovered planet, LP 791-18d, is thought…
James Webb telescope gets a view of the ‘white whale’ of exoplanet research
Studying other planets is difficult not only because they are so far away, but also because they can have properties that make taking readings much harder. Here in our solar…