Exoplanetary Science

The planetary system around Kepler-37, some 210 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, had its place in the media spotlight yesterday, although it will surely be a brief one. But it’s heartening to see the quickening interest in exoplanets that each new discovery brings. Will the interest continue? In the Apollo days, public [...]

You have to like the attitude of Thomas Henning (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie). The scientist is a member of a team of astronomers whose recent work on planet formation around TW Hydrae was announced this afternoon. Their work used data from ESA’s Herschel space observatory, which has the sensitivity at the needed wavelengths for scanning TW [...]

Yesterday’s post on exomoons and their possibilities as abodes for life leads naturally to new work from René Heller (Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics, Potsdam) and Rory Barnes (University of Washington). We’re finding planets much larger and more massive than Earth in the habitable zone, as the recent findings of the Planet Hunters project attest. What [...]

Plenty of interesting news is coming out of the American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach CA, enough that I’ll want to spread our look at it out over the next few days. I want to start with Geoff Marcy’s investigations with grad student Erik Petigura at UC-Berkeley, the two working in tandem with Andrew [...]