A team of U.S. astronomers has discovered a planet that is only a bit more massive than Earth, and they found it in the parent star's habitable zone, so it has the potential of harboring life. This is big news because the exoplanet is the first Earth-like planet found in the so-called Goldilocks Zone.
On February 2, 2011, NASA announced that its Kepler space telescope found its first Earth-size planet. In fact, it found five Earth-size planets all orbiting about one star, Kepler-11.
A survey of stars and planets performed by NASA astronomers at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii has concluded that “Nearly one in four stars similar to the sun may host planets as small as Earth….”
Astronomers are studying a planet called Corot-9b, which is about 1,500 light years from Earth, that they say will be studied in great detail because it is very similar to our planets in the Solar System. They think it might be reveal a "gold mine" of information.
The first glimpse of our planet Earth from outer space happened 45 years ago when the U.S. Lunar Orbiter 1 took a picture of Earth on August 23, 1966 while orbiting the Moon. Now, Neil Armstrong makes a rare public appearance in Australia to comment on the future of U.S. space exploration.
Written by: William Atkins | Published in: SpaceA planet has been discovered circling Alpha Centauri B, a star that is about 4.3 light-years away from Earth. Other than our Sun, Alpha Centauri B, along with two companions, is a member of the closest star system to us. This discovery is exciting to astronomers, and adds to the hundreds of planets already found orbiting stars.
The Earth has a tail and this dusty feature has been mapped by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Such a mapping is helping astronomers find very distant planets around other stars than our Sun, what are called extrasolar planets.
In 2006, the Pamela payload was launched into space to study cosmic rays from the Sun and beyond. In August 2011, It was announced that the module has discovered a band of antiprotons around Earth – the first time an appreciable amount of antiprotons has been found around Earth.
For the first time, a team of astronomers has characterized a super-Earth planet using a ground-based telescope. This is important in our quest to find life on a body other than Earth.
Email this page
