exoplanetology
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How the Color Purple Could Lead Us to Alien Life
In a little more than 30 years, we went from knowing only of the planets in our star system to discovering over 5,000 distant worlds spread across the cosmos. So far, none have looked quite like Earth. If an Earth-like planet was orbiting another star, however, it may look different than our precious pale blue…
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Webb Telescope Spots Wild World With Sand Clouds and Sulfuric Skies
The Webb Space Telescope has revealed a world quite alien compared to our own: WASP-107b, a Neptune-like gas giant that orbits a star some 211 light-years from Earth. Webb has now detected water vapor and sulfur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, as well as sand-like silicate clouds. The planet’s atmosphere is not dense, allowing a…
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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. At the heart of the system is V960 Mon, a young star about 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Monoceros. The star brightened to about 20 times its normal levels in 2014,…
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Last Gasp: A Dying NASA Telescope Spotted Three Exoplanets in Its Final Days
Five years since the Kepler Space Telescope was retired, a team of astronomers believe they’ve found exoplanets captured by some of the veteran observatory’s last light.