Exoplanet

Could an Earth-like planet also survive in an eccentric solar system? Life
Nov 14 2019

Could an Earth-like planet also survive in an eccentric solar system?

HR5183 is a yellow dwarf star, not very different from our own Sun and located about 103 light-years from Earth. After more than 20 years of observation, astronomers finally found a planet, of about three times Jupiter’s mass, orbiting the star this past summer. Why did it take so long? The planet, HR5183 b, needs 75 years to complete one orbit around its star. Therefore, the period at which it affects the light curve of its star is also correspondingly long. But what surprised the astronomers even more was the planet’s unusual orbit. HR5183 b comes about as close…
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A planet that shouldn’t exist Space
Oct 12 2019

A planet that shouldn’t exist

GJ 3512 is a red dwarf. The star is about 31 light-years from us and has only 12% the mass of the Sun. But as far as the size of its companions go, GJ 3512 doesn’t hold back. As a German and Spanish research team has discovered, it has a gas giant with a mass of almost half our Jupiter. “Such stars should actually only have Earth-sized planets or at most super-Earths with slightly more mass,” says Professor Christoph Mordasini of the Physics Institute at the University of Bern, discussing plausible scenarios for the formation of the large exoplanet…
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Water vapor in the atmosphere of an inhabitable rocky planet Life
Oct 5 2019

Water vapor in the atmosphere of an inhabitable rocky planet

There’s no shortage of water in the universe. Water molecules have even been found in the cold interstellar medium. After hydrogen, water is the second most abundant substance in the atmosphere of hot gas planets. Neptune, Uranus, and their siblings in space are not called ice giants for no reason – they also contain a large amount of water ice. On rocky planets, water could be a sign of good conditions for life. This, however, would also depend on where the water is located. Researchers already think that some planets have large quantities of water due to their densities.…
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The weather for HR 8799 e: 1000 degrees Celsius with clouds of iron and silicate dust Astrophysics
Apr 9 2019

The weather for HR 8799 e: 1000 degrees Celsius with clouds of iron and silicate dust

HR 8799 e is a rather inhospitable place. The celestial body discovered in 2010 and orbiting the 30-million-year-young star HR 8799 at a distance of 129 light-years from Earth is a gas giant similar to Jupiter. But its host star shines nearly five times brighter than our Sun, creating a significantly hotter atmosphere for HR 8799’s innermost planet (despite the “e,” HR 8799 e is the closest planet to its host star) than Jupiter. That is quite astonishing because at approximately 14.5 AU, HR 8799 e is almost five times farther from its host star than Jupiter is from…
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A sapphire- or ruby-like planet? Space
Jan 10 2019

A sapphire- or ruby-like planet?

55 Cancri e, HD219134 b, and WASP-47 e are three rocky planets – and they have something else in common: they might belong to a new class of super-Earths, according to arguments laid out by scientists from the University of Zurich and the University of Cambridge in a new paper. The astronomers looked at how planets are formed in protoplanetary disks. If they are formed, like the Earth, at a reasonable distance from their central star, then heavy elements, such as iron, magnesium, and silicon, condense. If, however, the protoplanet has an orbit that is very close to its…
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Neptunes and super-Earths are the most common types of exoplanets Space
Jan 7 2019

Neptunes and super-Earths are the most common types of exoplanets

With the help of the ALMA radio telescope, astronomers have taken a closer look at a series of protoplanetary disks around young stars in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, a region 430 light-years from Earth, in which many stars are currently being born. The researchers examined 32 protoplanetary disks; twelve of these disks have a structure with rings and gaps. (more…)
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A better weather report for the seven worlds of the Trappist system Space
Dec 5 2018

A better weather report for the seven worlds of the Trappist system

The red dwarf Trappist-1 is orbited by seven rocky planets. For a long time, this large number of planets has made it seem likely that at least one of them might be habitable. Now, in an article in the Astrophysical Journal, astronomers have reported on their results from calculations using previously known data to produce more precise atmospheric models for the seven worlds. (more…)
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Epsilon Indi C: a moon as massive as 70 Jupiters? Space
Nov 20 2018

Epsilon Indi C: a moon as massive as 70 Jupiters?

The star Epsilon Indi is just barely visible with the naked eye in the southern sky. It is at a distance of 11.8 light-years from the Earth and has approximately the same size as the Sun but is somewhat older. It has also turned the usual classification of star, planet, and moon upside down. This is because what we see is only Epsilon Indi A, but the star is orbited by a brown dwarf with a mass of 75 Jupiters and this brown dwarf has, in turn, a companion with a mass of 70 Jupiters. (more…)
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