Earth dust tail helps find exoplanets

In a project carried out out by an international team of astronomers with a telescope in New Zealand , a new class of planets has been found out in the universe: planets that do not orbit stars, but float freely out in space.

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….”

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.

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.

Written by: William Atkins | Published in: SpaceAn international team of astronomers used a NASA telescope to determine the average distance between stars. They used what is called "cosmic fog" to make this determination.

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.  

A study from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has announced that there are about one hundred possibly habitable rocky planets about the size of Earth or larger within 30 light-years from our planet.

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.

Astronomers are furiously discovering planets outside of our solar system. A recently found one, HD 85512b, is similar to our own Earth in that it resides within the Goldilock’s Zone, a range of altitudes above its parent star that could support life.