Comprehensive coverage

planets outside the solar system

The five LIFE mission satellites are connected to form a large space telescope. Credit: ETH Zurich / LIFE initiative

Earth's Infrared Secrets: The Key to Finding Life on Distant Worlds

  • 3 תגובות
The plan is to place five small satellites in space close to the Webb Space Telescope. Together these telescopes will act as a large telescope that will be used as an interferometer to receive infrared heat radiation from extrasolar planets. Finding life on Earth will give a good calibration of the spacecraft
Prof. Zvi Maza, photo: Tel Aviv University

Professor Zvi Maza is the recipient of the Israel Prize in the field of physics research for 2024 - an overview of his main discoveries

  • No comments
Professor Maza studied planets outside the solar system and even developed a method for discovering planets that allows expanding the search circle
A view of a planet in a multi-sun system. A dialogue between science fiction and science. Credit: The Science website via DALEE

Double suns and alien worlds: the science fiction journey from Tatooine to reality

  • No comments
Scientists used Bayesian network analysis to study how scientific discoveries influence science fiction literature
Photograph of the inner region of the Orion Nebula as viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam instrument. Rights: NASA, ESA, CSA, Data analysis and processing capability: PDRs4All ERS team; Graphic rendering by S. Fuenmayor

The James Webb Space Telescope reveals the unseen forces that shape planetary systems

  • No comments
Researchers studying the Orion Nebula with the James Webb Space Telescope found that ultraviolet radiation from massive stars prevents the formation of giant planets in young systems by scattering their building materials.
Astronomers have found water vapor in the disk around a young star right where planets are likely to form. In this image, the new observations from the ESO partner Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) show the water vapor in shades of blue. Near the center of the disc, where the young star lives, the environment is hotter and the gas is brighter. The red rings are previous ALMA observations showing the distribution of dust around the star.Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/S. Facchini et al.

Astronomers discover a new connection between water and the formation of planets

  • 3 תגובות
An amount of water at least three times greater than the water in all the Earth's oceans was discovered in the inner disk of the young Sun-like star HL Tauri, 450 light-years away from Earth, in the Taurus group
An amusing representation of the TOI-1136 system if each of the bodies in the system were a duck or a duckling. Credit: Rae Holcomb/University of California at Irvine

The evolution of planets is revealed in a distant solar system

  • One response
A newly discovered solar system with six confirmed extrasolar planets and a possible seventh increases astronomers' knowledge of star formation and evolution
This image from Webb's MIRI (mid-infrared) camera shows the star system Beta Pictoris. A flat disk of dust fragments, formed by collisions between planetesimals (orange), dominates the landscape and is called the "main disk plane". In the lower left corner, Webb showed the true extent of the secondary disk (cyan (turquoise), which is inclined 5 degrees relative to the primary disk. Webb also discovered a previously unseen feature called the "cat's tail." A coronagraph (a black circle and two small disks) was used to block The light of the central star. Scale bar shows that the disks of Beta Peak (pictoris) span hundreds of astronomical units (AU), where one AU is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. (In our solar system, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30 AU) in this image , light at a wavelength of 15.5 microns is shown in cyan (turquoise) and 23 microns in orange (F1550C and F2300C filters, respectively). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, C. STARK and K. LAWSON (NASA GSFC), J. KAMMERER (ESO), and M. PERRIN (STSCI).

The Webb Space Telescope discovered a 'cat's tail' made of dust in the Beta Pictoris system

  • No comments
Beta Pictoris is a solar system in the making and relatively close so that the gas disks can be seen. It turns out that Webb was able to discover a structure that was not noticed in photographs with less sensitive instruments, thus he discovered a disk of gas tilted from our main disk and because of our vantage point it looks like a cat's tail
Artist's rendering of the planet WASP-121 b showing distinct climate patterns. Image: NASA/ESA

Hubble observes changes in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system

  • No comments
An international team of astronomers compiled and reprocessed observations of the extrasolar planet WASP‑121 b collected by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016, 2018 and 2019 and noticed weather patterns on its surface. It is a hot Jupiter-type planet - that is, on the order of Jupiter but very close to its sun
Research shows that giant gas planets in other star systems often prevent the habitability of neighboring Earth-like planets by disrupting orbits and climates. An artist's rendering of an exoplanet system full of giant planets. Credit: NASA/Dana Berry

Chaos rules the cosmos: How giant gas planets threaten life on nearby Earth-like worlds

  • 2 תגובות
Jupiter, the largest planet by far in our solar system, plays an important protective role. Its enormous gravitational field deflects comets and asteroids that might otherwise hit Earth, helping to create a stable environment for life to exist. But giant planets elsewhere in the universe don't necessarily protect life in their smaller, rocky neighbors.
An artist's illustration of the six newly discovered planets orbiting their star in resonance. Credit: Roger Thibaut (NCCR PlanetS)

In a harmonious rhythm: deciphering the "unsolvable puzzle" of a system with six planets

  • 2 תגובות
An international team of astronomers discovered a system of six planets orbiting the star HD110067 in a unique harmonic resonance
This artist rendering shows what the sub-Neptunian exoplanet TOI-421 b might look like. In a new study, scientists have found new evidence of how planets of this type can lose their atmosphere. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and D. Player (STScI)

Cosmic disappearance: NASA solves the mystery of shrinking planets

  • 5 תגובות
Researchers have found that certain planets outside the solar system are shrinking due to the loss of their atmosphere
An artist's rendering of the planet 8 Ursae Minoris b - also known as "The Goddess" - within the debris field after a violent merger of two stars. The planet may have survived the merger, but it is also possible that it is an entirely new planet formed from the fragments. Illustration: Kek Observatory/Adam Makarenko

A large planet surprisingly orbits a star that was supposed to destroy it

  • 2 תגובות
The TESS space telescope discovered a planet that survived a merger between two stars as the merged star swelled to become a red giant
Scientists say that stray planets, which wander through space when not bound to stars, far outnumber planets orbiting stars. Credit: NASA

Cosmic nomads: Roman space telescope could find 400 stray Earth-mass planets

  • 3 תגובות
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, which will be launched in May 2027, will be able to find an astonishing number of 400 Earth-mass stray worlds. Indeed, in the new study, one such candidate has already been identified
An image of the system HD 169142 shows the signal of the forming planet HD 169142 b (around 11 o'clock), and also a bright spiral arm following it as a result of the dynamic interaction between the planet and the disk in which it is located. Credit: V. Chrisitaens / ULiège

A new world is born: astronomers confirm a protoplanet 374 light years away from Earth

  • No comments
Protoplanets form from clumps of material in disks around newborn stars. When the planet is still forming, that is, when it is still collecting material, it is called a protoplanet. This is only the third protoplanet discovered
Planets orbit two suns. Illustration: depositphotos.com

A "Tatoine-like" planet orbiting two suns has been discovered

  • 2 תגובות
An international team of astronomers has announced the discovery of a second planet in the circumbinary system (where planets orbit two suns) of the rare multiple planet BEBOP-1. This planet was discovered using the transit method and was noticed because it passed in front of the brighter of the two stars on different occasions
A planet in the life zone or golden zone - where water can exist in a liquid state. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Golden zones abound: hundreds of millions of planets in the Milky Way could possibly support life

  • 5 תגובות
A new study suggests that a third of the planets orbiting dwarf stars common to the Milky Way could potentially support life. As in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, one plate is too hot, the second is too cold and the third is just right
Artist's rendering of the planet GJ 1214 b. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Glowing steamy surprise: NASA's Webb takes a closer look at a mysterious planet

  • 9 תגובות
"The planet is completely covered in a kind of layer of fog or clouds," said Eliza Kempton, a researcher at the University of Maryland and lead author of a new paper on the planet published in Nature. "The atmosphere simply remained completely hidden from us until this observation." She noted that if the planet was indeed rich in water, it could have been a "water world", with large amounts of water and ice material at the time of its formation.
This artist's illustration shows a collision between two bodies of ice and dust orbiting the bright star Pomelhot, 25 light-years away. This may have caused an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles. Credit: ESA, NASA and M. Kornmesser

Webb explores the asteroid belt of the young solar system Pummelhot and discovers evidence of hidden planets

  • 2 תגובות
The belts surround the hot young star, which can be seen with the unaided eye as the brightest star in the southern group Southern Pisces. The dust belts are fragments from the collisions of larger bodies, corresponding to asteroids and comets, and are often described as "fragment disks"
Measuring the atmosphere of the planet Trappist-1b. NASA/MIT figure

Two new types of planets have been discovered by the Webb Space Telescope

  • No comments
For the first time, the temperature of a rocky planet was measured, as well as a planet similar to Jupiter but containing large amounts of heavy elements
Planets in another solar system. Illustration: depositphotos.com

Researchers have classified the thousands of solar systems that have been discovered into four possible types

  • No comments
The study, published in the Astrophysical Journal, was led by researchers from the University of Arizona and the California Institute of Technology. The team used data from NASA's Kepler space telescope launched in 2009 to search for exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars other than our sun
The planet LHS 475 b is similar in size to Earth: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI)

The Webb Space Telescope has discovered an Earth-sized planet 41 light-years away

  • 2 תגובות
However, the conditions there are more reminiscent of Venus than Earth. It orbits a red dwarf in an orbit that lasts only two days * Webb was able to confirm the existence of the planet after only two orbits
solar system trappist-1. Illustration: depositphotos.com

An innovative system estimates the habitability (ability to support life) of distant planets

  • 6 תגובות
A computerized system classifies the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system. and determines which of them are capable of sustaining human settlement in the future
Artist impression of BEASTie. The image shows a gas giant planet (like Jupiter) in distant orbit around a massive blue star. It is likely that the planet was captured or stolen from another planet. The stars in the background belong to the same star-forming region and could be the star around which the BEASTie was born. Credit: Mark Garlick

Planetary robbery: Astronomers discover that stars can steal planets

  • No comments
Researchers at the University of Sheffield have proposed a new source for Jupiter-like planets orbiting massive stars three times the mass of our Sun
An international team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water. Credit: Benoit Goujon, University of Montreal

Water world: Astronomers have discovered a planet that may be completely covered in a deep ocean

  • 15 תגובות
The spectral analysis of TOI-1452 b shows that water may make up to 30% of the planet's mass, a proportion similar to that of several moons in our solar system, such as Jupiter's moons Ganymede and Callisto, and Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus. The mass of water is only 1%

The James Webb Telescope reveals in detail the steamy atmosphere of a distant planet

  • 4 תגובות
The light spectrum - which contains information about the composition of a planetary atmosphere 1,150 light years away - reveals a clear signature of water * The strength of the signal that Webb detected hints at the significant role that the telescope will play in the search for potentially habitable planets in the coming years
Science website logo
SEARCH