# Exoplanets



## Drone (Sep 10, 2011)

Hah and it happens just when I was thinking of wimps, dark matter, neutrinos and Neptune! Ok I digress ...



> Kepler-19b, which orbits the Sun-like star Kepler-19 in the constellation Lyra, has been found to have an 'invisible' world tugging on it.



Yeah that's it. They called it *Kepler-19c*. They found it by gravitational influence it has on Kepler-19b. They know it exists but not much else. They don't even know its brightness and I don't even talk about its mass and composition. We just can't see it. I wonder how it looks like.



> Because Kepler-19b's transits around its star alternatively speed up and slow down by up to five minutes rather than running like clockwork, scientists determined that another planetary body must be tugging on it.



That reminds me of Neptune. People didn't know about Neptune (back in the day), they predicted its existence by irregularities in the orbit of neighboring Uranus. Very interesting method. I've read about this few days ago.


http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=34558


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## Drone (May 11, 2012)

Well deserved bump







Another unseen planet has been revealed:



> Using Kepler Telescope transit data of planet “b”, scientists predicted that a second planet “c” about the mass of Saturn orbits the distant star KOI-872. (KOI stands for Kepler Objects of Interest)



Amazing discovery. Just like it happened before with Kepler-19c.








> Scientists analyzed Kepler Telescope data and identified KOI-872 as a stellar system where measured transits of a planet orbiting the star show large time variations (the shifting bumps in the data) indicative of a *hidden companion*. Researchers determined that the observed variations can be best explained by an unseen planet about the mass of Saturn orbiting the host star every 57 days.



The spacing and timing are crucial:



> A hidden planet, for example, can distort the sequence of transits if it gravitationally pulls on the transiting planet and delays some transits relative to others.



Dr. David Nesvorny who led this research explains:



> "It quickly became apparent to us that a large hidden object must be pulling on the transiting planet. To put this in context, if a bullet train arrives in a station two hours late, there must be a very good reason for that. The trick was to find what it is.



Lol anyone remember what Yoda said? _Go to the center of gravity's pull and find your planet, you will, Hmmm._ Ok I digress ...




> The team's claim will be put to the test by Kepler's new observations, which will track dozens of new transits of KOI-872, comparing their timing to published predictions.



I wish them luck 

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-reveal-unseen-planet-gravity.html


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## micropage7 (May 11, 2012)

how could they say they find it when the planet is invisible?
planet is an object, so it should be seen, has size
but if it aint seen, it could be anything, dark energy, big meteorit or UFO spaceship in cloak mode maybe
they even aint see it at all
but it still interesting


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## W1zzard (May 11, 2012)

invisible in this context means it doesnt pass in front of its star, so we can't see the star dim, so we can't see the planet.

imagine a line from us to the star, we keep looking at the star to see its brightness change, if the "invisible" planet's orbit never takes it between us and the star we will never see it


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## Aquinus (May 11, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> http://i744.photobucket.com/albums/xx81/Johnon/Meme collection/GTFO.png



You can't see the wireless signal that goes into your laptop, therefore does that mean your wireless connection doesn't exist? Please try again.


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## Drone (May 11, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> it could be anything, dark energy, big meteorit or UFO spaceship



If someone knocks on your door and runs away what would you think of? Was it some alien, a bear, Elvis, a lolcat or maybe it was just some _prankish kid_?

In many cases knowledge/experience and logics become more important than evidence.



\/ Technically bears can knock.


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## W1zzard (May 11, 2012)

Drone said:


> Was it some alien, a bear, Elvis, a lolcat



alien doesn't know the custom of knocking, the bear can't knock with his paws, elvis is dead or you would hear the people sing kumbaya outside, the lolcat can't escape teh internetz

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KayBys8gaJY (The burden of proof)


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## entropy13 (May 11, 2012)

W1zz is probably from that planet and is working hard to keep it secret and invisible to us Earthlings.


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## D007 (May 11, 2012)

Drone said:


> If someone knocks on your door and runs away what would you think of? Was it some alien, a bear, Elvis, a lolcat or maybe it was just some _prankish kid_?
> 
> In many cases knowledge/experience and logics become more important than evidence.
> 
> ...



Immediately I'd say it was the lolcat.. For sure..
But good stuff.. Maybe one day we'll find a planet, we actually go to..lol


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## Completely Bonkers (May 11, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> it could be anything, dark energy, big meteorit or UFO spaceship in cloak mode maybe or *a large shipment of 670's causing space-time curve*



^^ I think he's on to something...


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## scoutingwraith (May 12, 2012)

A very I interesting find.....wonder if it's a gas planet or a rocky type one.


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## AlienIsGOD (May 12, 2012)

W1zzard said:


> alien doesn't know the custom of knocking



Excuse me good sir!!  I always knock


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## Soylent Joe (May 12, 2012)

inb4 Nibiru


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## m1dg3t (May 16, 2012)

Cool! As observing/detecting tech improves/matures we will definately find more & more out "there" 

I'm curious as to the composistion?


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## Vulpesveritas (May 16, 2012)

Cool.  I wonder if it's a rocky planet...


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## PopcornMachine (May 16, 2012)

Maybe planet b is just going through a patch of space where time slows down.


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## Drone (May 19, 2012)

*Newfound exoplanet may turn to dust*

Another object found:



> Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a _possible planet_, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star dubbed KIC 12557548. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris - much like the tail of a comet - is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet's disintegration. According to the team's calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within *100 million years*.



But they think it is a planet, not a comet.



> The team found that the dusty planet circles its parent star every 15 hours - one of the shortest planet orbits ever observed. Such a short orbit must be very tight and implies that the planet must be heated by its orange-hot parent star to a temperature of about 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers hypothesize that rocky material at the surface of the planet melts and evaporates at such high temperatures, forming a wind that carries both gas and dust into space. Dense clouds of the dust trail the planet as it speeds around its star.



That's a long and most painful way to die ...

http://phys.org/news/2012-05-newfound-exoplanet.html


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## Morgoth (May 19, 2012)

so there are more then 9 realms? what sorcery is going on here?


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## Drone (Jun 21, 2012)

> A research team led by astronomers at the University of Washington and Harvard University has discovered a bigger version of Earth locked in an orbital tug-of-war with a much larger, Neptune-sized planet as they orbit very close to each other around the same star about 1,200 light years from Earth.



Yup another two new planets: *Kepler-36b* and *Kepler-36c*. They are orbiting a star in the Cygnus constellation referred to as Kepler-36a.



> The planets occupy nearly the same orbital plane and on their closest approach come within about 1.2 million miles of each other – just five times the Earth-moon distance and about 20 times closer to one another than any two planets in our solar system. But the timing of their orbits means they'll never collide. *These are the closest two planets to one another that have ever been found*. The bigger planet is pushing the smaller planet around more, so the smaller planet is harder to find.



It's always great to know about the new worlds.



> Planet b is a rocky planet like Earth, though 4.5 times more massive and with a radius 1.5 times greater. Kepler-36c, which could be either gaseous like Jupiter or watery, is 8.1 times more massive than Earth and has a radius 3.7 times greater.



They used _photometer_ (to measure light from distant celestial objects) and applied an algorithm called _quasi-periodic pulse detection_.



> The data revealed a slight dimming of light coming from Kepler-36a every 16 days, the length of time it takes the larger Kepler-36c to circle its star. Kepler-36b circles the star seven times for each six orbits of 36c, but it was not discovered initially because of its small size and the gravitational jostling by its orbital companion. But when the algorithm was applied to the data, the signal was unmistakable.



Researchers said that the transit time pattern for the large planet and the transit time pattern for the smaller planet are mirror images of one another. Interesting ....

Ok now about composition and other properties:



> They believe the smaller planet is 30% iron, less than 1% atmospheric hydrogen and helium and probably no more than 15% water. The larger planet, on the other hand, likely has a rocky core surrounded by a substantial amount of atmospheric hydrogen and helium. The planets' densities differ by a factor of eight but their orbits differ by only 10%.
> 
> The team also calculated specific information for the star itself, determining that Kepler-36a is about the same mass as the sun but is just 25% as dense. It also is slightly hotter and has slightly less metal content. The researchers concluded that the _star is a few billion years older than the sun_ and no longer burns hydrogen at its core, so has entered a sub-giant phase in which its radius is 60% greater than the sun's.




http://phys.org/news/2012-06-astronomers-spy-planets-tight-quarters.html


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## D007 (Jun 21, 2012)

Ty scientist for being smart, so I don't have to be..


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## Drone (Jul 20, 2012)

For everyone who still cares:








> New data suggest the confirmation of the exoplanet *Gliese 581g* and the best candidate so far of a potential habitable exoplanet. The nearby star Gliese 581 is well known for having four planets with the outermost planet, Gliese 581d, already suspected habitable. This will be the first time evidence for any two potential habitable exoplanets orbiting the same star. Gliese 581g will be included, together with Gliese 667Cc, Kepler-22b, HD85512, and Gliese 581d, in the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog of the PHL @ UPR Arecibo as the best five objects of interest for Earth-like exoplanets.



This is really exciting. This newfound exoplanet Gliese 581g is _the most Earth-like planet ever known_.



> Based on the new data Gliese 581g probably has a radius not larger than 1.5 times Earth radii. It receives about the same light flux as Earth does from the Sun due to its closer orbital position around a dim red dwarf star. These factors combine to make Gliese 581g  the most Earth-like planet known with an Earth Similarity Index, a measure of Earth-likeness from zero to one, of 0.92 and higher than the previously top candidate Gliese 667Cc, discovered last year.



Amazing 

http://phys.org/news/2012-07-potential-habitable-exoplanets.html


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## Inceptor (Jul 21, 2012)

That's interesting.
BUT, Gliese 581 is a red dwarf so the system is probably bathed in relatively high amounts of ionizing radiation.  Red dwarf stars tend to be flare stars.  If that is the case then it's probably not a very friendly place for biological life, as we know it.


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## ViperXTR (Jul 24, 2012)

does it have a moon? if i remember correctly without a stabilizing moon its tidal behavior can be quite cataclysmic and its axial range will be larger creatign diverse climates


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## Inceptor (Jul 25, 2012)

All the planets orbiting Gliese 581 are so close to the star, because of its low mass, that they may all be tidally locked, or nearly so.  I think that if any of them have moons, those moons aren't going to have more influence than the parent star.


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## gopal (Jul 25, 2012)

Well the kelper reminds me the nvidia kelper series is the planet is owned by nvidia?


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## Drone (Jul 26, 2012)

gopal said:


> Well the kelper reminds me the nvidia kelper series is the planet is owned by nvidia?



Kepler was a famous German astronomer. I dunno maybe people at nvidia just wanted to show how "smart-ass" they are so they decided to choose this codename. Apparently maybe they even haven't ever heard about Kepler's laws of planetary motion. Whatever ...

Some interesting news here:



> Researchers at MIT, the University of California at Santa Cruz and other institutions have detected the first exoplanetary system, 10,000 light years away, with regularly aligned orbits similar to those in our solar system. At the center of this faraway system is Kepler-30, a star as bright and massive as the sun. After analyzing data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, the MIT scientists and their colleagues discovered that the star - much like the sun - rotates around a vertical axis and its three planets have orbits that are all in the same plane.



In that system the planets and the star are aligned with each other just like in our solar system. Unlike the hot-jupiter systems which are misaligned.



> Kepler-30 rotates along an axis perpendicular to the orbital plane of its largest planet. The researchers determined the alignment of the planets' orbits by studying the gravitational effects of one planet on another. By measuring the timing variations of planets as they transit the star, the team derived their respective orbital configurations, and found that all three planets are aligned along the same plane. The overall planetary structure looks much like our solar system.



It's awesome that far-off alien world looks like our solar system.  Just like scientists say we may find clues in extrasolar planetary systems to help understand the puzzles of the solar system, and vice versa.

More here:

http://web.mit.edu/physics/news/spotlight/20120725_winn.html


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## Drone (Aug 1, 2012)

Another newfound world.



> Thirty-three light-years away, in the constellation Leo, astronomers have found a world (5200 miles across, about 2/3 as large as Earth) called *UCF-1.01*, orbiting a dim red-dwarf star *GJ 436*.



Space is a cool place 



> UCF-1.01 is probably not a very nice place. It whips around its host star in only 1.4 Earth-days, at a distance of about 1.6 million miles (we're 93 million miles from our sun). Temperatures on its surface probably exceed 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, raising the possibility that some of it is molten, covered in lava. Any atmosphere would have boiled away long ago.



The place is hot and it's hard to see it.



> Researchers could not see it directly - its sun is nothing but a dot in a telescope - but they could see a tiny dip in the star's brightness as the disc of UCF-1.01 passed in front of it. For now, they cannot even calculate its mass; current technology is not good enough for a reliable number.



http://news.yahoo.com/planet-found-smaller-earth-orbiting-distant-star-203543868--abc-news-tech.html


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## AphexDreamer (Aug 1, 2012)

We should send some organic material to Gliese 581g to try and see if we can seed life there.


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## Drone (Aug 29, 2012)

New multi-planet system has been found. It's called *Kepler-47*. It consists of two stars and two planets. The primary star is about the same mass as the Sun, and its companion is an M-dwarf star one-third its size. The inner planet is three times the size of Earth and orbits the binary star every 49.5 days, while the outer planet is 4.6 times the size of Earth with an orbit of 303.2 days.


http://phys.org/news/2012-08-kepler-multi-planet-binary-star.html

The outer planet is the first planet found to orbit a binary star within the "habitable zone," where liquid water could exist. However, the planet's size (about the same as Uranus) means that it is an icy giant, and not an abode for life.


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## Drone (Aug 31, 2012)

Another _Gliese_ planet has been found. It's a _rock-water_ world covered with a dense cloud layer.







It's called *Gliese 163c* and located 50 light years away in the Dorado constellation.



> Gliese 163c has a minimum mass of 6.9 Earth masses and takes nearly 26 days to orbit its red dwarf star. Another larger planet, Gliese 163b, was also found to orbit the star much closer with a 9 days period. An additional third, but unconfirmed planet, might be orbiting the star much farther away.



This super-Earth planet is hot, plus it "baths" in stellar wind.



> Gliese 163c receives on average 40% more light from its parent star than Earth from the Sun, making it hotter. Its surface temperature might be around *60°C*.



http://phys.org/news/2012-08-hot-potential-habitable-exoplanet-gliese.html


p.s. I posted info about other Gliese planet in this post:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2680256&postcount=23


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## Drone (Oct 11, 2012)

*Diamond* planet - *55 Cancri e* - has been found  I bet every woman would love to live there, and it's not that far just 40 ly away  As always astronomers have used _transit method_ to find the planet.



> *55 Cancri e* - has a radius twice Earth's, and a mass eight times greater, making it a "super-Earth." It is one of five planets orbiting a sun-like star, 55 Cancri, that is located 40 light years from Earth yet visible to the naked eye in the constellation of Cancer. The planet orbits at hyper speed - *its year lasts just 18 hours*. It's also blazingly hot, with a temperature of about 3900F.



Ok go back to diamonds ...



> The surface of this planet is likely covered in *graphite and diamond* rather than water and granite. The study estimates that at least a third of the planet's mass - the equivalent of about three Earth masses - could be diamond.


 

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-nearby-super-earth-diamond-planet.html






http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/article00649.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/multimedia/pia15622.html

http://www.space.com/23138-diamond-planet-super-earth-discovery.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/news/spitzer20120508.html


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## 3870x2 (Oct 11, 2012)

I wonder what the melting point of diamond is...

EDIT:
6422F

There is a good chance that there is liquid diamond there.


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## Depth (Oct 15, 2012)

Drone said:


> *Diamond* planet - *55 Cancri e* - has been found  I bet every woman would love to live there, and it's not that far just 40 ly away  As always astronomers have used _transit method_ to find the planet.
> 
> http://phys.org/news/2012-10-nearby-super-earth-diamond-planet.html



"A radius twice Earth's, and a mass eight times greater, with 18 hours to a year"

I wonder how it's shape is. Think it's formed like a diamond as well?







Probably oval or shaped like a teardrop but it's a nice thought.


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## de.das.dude (Oct 15, 2012)

micropage7 said:


> how could they say they find it when the planet is invisible?
> planet is an object, so it should be seen, has size
> but if it aint seen, it could be anything, dark energy, big meteorit or UFO spaceship in cloak mode maybe
> they even aint see it at all
> but it still interesting



you sound like the church.


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## 3870x2 (Oct 15, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> you sound like the church.



I don't quite understand.

An atheist would say this same statement.


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## de.das.dude (Oct 15, 2012)

3870x2 said:


> I don't quite understand.
> 
> An atheist would say this same statement.



lol. i meant the old church.


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## Drone (Oct 16, 2012)

Astronomers think they've found another system. It's called KOI-500 and located 1100 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. They haven't validate the data yet.








> An extreme case in point is a newly found solar system that was announced on October 15, 2012 which packs five planets into a region less than one-twelve the size of Earth's orbit!



Scientists think that planets didn't form at their current locations but have 'migrated' into the ultra-compact configuration during the formation process.



> The five planets have "years" that are only 1, 3.1, 4.6, 7.1, and 9.5 days. All five planets zip around their star within a region 150 times smaller in area than the Earth's orbit, despite containing more material than several Earths (the planets range from 1.3 to 2.6 times the size of the Earth).



That's quite a crowded situation.

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-extreme-solar-arent-planetary.html

____________________________________

*edit*: *A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System* (see the second part of this post) is now *officially confirmed*. YAY!




As well as two Kepler planets which were confirmed in 2011.


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## Drone (Oct 17, 2012)

Wow so many planets they find these days. In binary, triple and now even quadruple systems. Some crowded around a single star, others reside in more complex environments. It's amazing how technology steps further and further, and how amazingly sensitive it got. All those objects can't be seen but can be detected. We live in exciting times! Meh, if I only could rewind my life I'd definitely have been an astronomer .... *sigh*

Ok ... some more news: 



> European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system - the nearest to Earth. It is also the *lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun*.








This is the first planet with a mass similar to Earth ever found around a star like the Sun. Its orbit is very close to its star (it's orbiting Alpha Centauri B every 3.2 days) and it must be much too hot for life as we know it.



> Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System - only 4.3 ly away. It is actually a triple star - Alpha Centauri A and B, and a more distant and faint red component known as Proxima Centauri.



So we have a planet in Alpha Centauri. It's so "close". Fascinating!



> Alpha Centauri B is very similar to the Sun but slightly smaller and less bright. The newly discovered planet, with a mass of a little more than that of the Earth, is orbiting about six million kilometers away from the star, much closer than Mercury is to the Sun. The orbit of the other bright component of the double star, Alpha Centauri A, keeps it hundreds of times further away, but it would still be a very brilliant object in the planet's skies.
> 
> *The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet. The effect is minute - it causes the star to move back and forth by no more than 51 cm/s (1.8 km/hour), about the speed of a baby crawling. This is the highest precision ever achieved using this method.*



Well done. Thumbs up!
http://phys.org/news/2012-10-earth-sized-planet-solar.html
_____________________

******************
_____________________

And even more news! Astronomers found a planet (now called *PH1*) in a system with *four stars*! Such planets are the extreme and called *circumbinary* planets. I've never heard that word before, but now I know  It's amazing that volunteers using the Planethunters.org website and professional astronomers together found it. I hope they'll find more in the future.








> A joint effort of citizen scientists and professional astronomers has led to the first reported case of a *planet orbiting twin suns that in turn is orbited by a second distant pair of stars.*



YO DAWG I HERD YOU LIKE BINARY STARS SO WE PUT BINARY SYSTEM IN BINARY SYSTEM   But I digress.. 



> PH1 orbits outside the 20-day orbit of a pair of eclipsing stars that are 1.5 and 0.41 times the mass of the Sun. It revolves around its host stars roughly every 138 days. Beyond the planet's orbit at about 1000 AU (roughly 1000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun) is a second pair of stars orbiting the planetary system.



It's astonishing that astronomers can glean so much information about another planet thousands of light years away just by studying the light from its parent star.

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-armchair-astronomers-planet-quadruple-star.html


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## Inceptor (Oct 21, 2012)

The Alpha Centauri B b news is exciting... Well as exciting as planet hunting news could get, I suppose.  
There's no real, relatively immediate incentive to spend money on large telescopes, deep space probes, and 'deep space tech', in general, at the moment.
I hope astronomers find more planets in the Alpha Centauri system.


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## Drone (Nov 8, 2012)

Astronomers found a potentially habitable exoplanet, *HD 40307 g* 
There is a 50% chance that it'd be a rocky planet like Earth.

Located ~42 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor, it's not tidally locked and it's partying in water-friendly zone. 

http://www.tech-stew.com/post/2012/...tentially-habitable-Super-Earth-HD40307g.aspx

That planet is quite heavy and ain't too warm (the sixth planet from its star) ... Its host star HD 40307 is "quiet and old" and smaller than the Sun (0.75 Mass of the Sun).



> HD 40307 g appears to be in the star's liquid-water habitable zone, and orbiting at 0.6 AU in an approximately 200-day-long orbit. At this distance the estimated 7-Earth-mass exoplanet receives around 62% of the radiation that Earth gets from the Sun.









Astronomers need a direct imaging mission, because transit method doesn't give important details about this planet. I'd like to know about its atmosphere  This six-planet system is quite interesting.


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## PopcornMachine (Nov 8, 2012)

Very cool stuff.  



Drone said:


> Located ~42 light-years away ...



But, 42?  Could it be a coincidence?  I think not.


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## Drone (Nov 14, 2012)

Shocking news!  Astronomers found free-floating planet wandering through space. And finally we have a picture! 




The planet called *CFBDSIR2149* is a faint blue dot at the centre of the picture. 



> This is the *closest* such object to the Solar System. *It does not orbit a star* and hence does not shine by reflected light; the faint glow it emits can only be detected in infrared light. The object appears blueish in this near-infrared view because much of the light at longer infrared wavelengths is absorbed by methane and other molecules in the planet's atmosphere.



Rover Wanderer Nomad Vagabond 



> The planet was found to be 50-120 millions years old, with a temperature of approximately 400 degrees celsius, and a mass 4-7 times that of Jupiter.



It's way too young but hot and heavy isolated chick. The absence of a shining star in the vicinity of this planet enabled astronomers to study its atmosphere in great detail. Fascinating!

http://phys.org/news/2012-11-astronomers-homeless-planet-space.html











A lost starless rogue world 

In visible light the object is so cool that it would only shine dimly with a deep red colour when seen close-up.


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## qubit (Nov 14, 2012)

Free floating planet - nice find. 

The only thing missing from that animation is the wooshing sound things make as they fly through space, like in all the sci-fi movies.


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## Drone (Jan 8, 2013)

> A new analysis has determined the frequencies of planets of all sizes, from Earths up to gas giants. Key findings include the fact that *one in six stars hosts an Earth-sized planet* in an orbit of 85 days or less, and that almost *all sun-like stars have a planetary system of some sort*.










> NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of *461 new planet candidates*. _Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet_. Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data now totals *2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars*. Today, 43% of Kepler's planet candidates are observed to have neighbor planets.



The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems.



> The Kepler space telescope identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars in search of planets that pass in front of, or "transit," their host star. At least three transits are required to verify a signal as a potential planet.
> 
> Scientists analyzed more than 13,000 transit-like signals to eliminate known spacecraft instrumentation and astrophysical false positives, phenomena that masquerade as planetary candidates, to identify the potential new planets.
> 
> Candidates require additional follow-up observations and analyses to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, 33 candidates in the Kepler data had been confirmed as planets. Today, there are 105.



Holy cow so many different planets. Just like they say: *"It's no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when."*


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## McSteel (Jan 8, 2013)

I think we'll shift from "when" to "how many" pretty quick.


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## Drone (Jan 8, 2013)

Video of the day:

Zombie-planet Fomalhaut b










Very dim with eccentric orbit


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## Drone (Jan 25, 2013)

*Strange Exoplanet HAT-P-7b with Backwards Orbit*



> The planetary system around the star HAT-P-7 includes a companion star HAT-P-7B and two planets (HAT-P-7b and HAT-P-7c). The orbit of the planet HAT-P-7c is located between the retrograde HAT-P-7b and the star HAT-P-7B. The second star (HAT-P-7B) pulled the giant outer planet (HAT-P-7c) into a tilted orbit until its path started affecting the inner planet (HAT-P-7b), generating the latter's retrograde orbit.



Sounds complicated. Inner planet HAT-P-7b orbits backwards around its star because there's other planet HAT-P-7c and a companion star HAT-P-7B.






The planetary system around the star HAT-P-7 includes a companion star and two planets. These photos of the system were taken by the Subaru Telescope.


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## Drone (Feb 20, 2013)

*NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System: Smallest Planet Yet Found Around a Star Similar to Our Sun*



> The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, ~ 210 ly from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, *Kepler-37b*, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge.








Yet another solar system but now with tiniest planet and two companion planets.



> Astronomers think Kepler-37b does not have an atmosphere and cannot support life as we know it. The tiny planet almost certainly is rocky in composition. Kepler-37c, the closer neighboring planet, is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring almost three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d, the farther planet, is twice the size of Earth. All three planets orbit the star at less than the distance Mercury is to the sun, suggesting they are very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-37b orbits every 13 days at less than one-third Mercury's distance from the sun. The estimated surface temperature of this smoldering planet, at more than 700 K, would be hot enough to melt the zinc in a penny. Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit every 21 days and 40 days, respectively.



Hellish places.


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## Drone (Mar 11, 2013)

Closest Star System Found

It's called *WISE J104915.57-531906* - a pair of brown dwarfs located only 6.5 ly away (so close that Earth's television transmissions from 2006 are now arriving there). This system is the third-closest star system to the Sun!



> The star system is named "WISE J104915.57-531906" because it was discovered in a map of the entire sky obtained by the NASA-funded Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite. It is only slightly farther away than the second-closest star, Barnard's star, which was discovered 6 ly from the Sun in 1916. The closest star system consists of Alpha Centauri, found to be a neighbor of the Sun in 1839 at 4.4 ly, and the fainter Proxima Centauri, discovered in 1917 at 4.2 ly.



Here's the image:


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## Drone (Mar 12, 2013)

New star system found:






A star HR 8799 with 4 planets (hot and toxic).



> HR 8799's system, which is 128 ly away from Earth, is one of only a couple of these stars that have been imaged, and the only one for which *spectroscopy of all the planets has been obtained*. These warm, red planets are unlike any other known object in our universe. All four planets have different spectra, and all four are peculiar.



That's really cool








> Planets have "lukewarm" temperatures of about 1000 K, either have methane or ammonia, with little or no signs of their chemical partners. Other chemicals such as acetylene, previously undiscovered on any exoplanet, and carbon dioxide may be present as well. The planets also are "redder," meaning that they emit longer wavelengths of light, than celestial objects with similar temperatures. This could be explained by significant but patchy cloud cover on the planets.


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## Drone (Oct 17, 2013)

*New Exoplanetary System Discovered*

*Scientists have found the first multi-planet system that is tilted out of alignment with the host star.*



> The star, known as *Kepler-56*, (~2800 ly from Earth) is about 45 degrees out of alignment from the orbital plane of a pair of planets, which circle their parent star in 10- and 20 days respectively. Trying to determine what elbowed the planets out from the equatorial plane of their star led Huber and colleagues to a third, non-transiting, massive companion, which could be another planet or a star.



Another mystery ...



> The third, outer companion is inclined to the orbital plane of the inner planets. Scientists suspect its torque is tilting the orbital plane of the inner planets, with respect to the equatorial plane of the parent star. Some kind of dynamically disruption must have happened a long time ago that caused a planet to migrate so close to its host star. Such a dynamical tilting scenario had been recently suggested theoretically, and has now been observed for the first time



Go figure dafuq happened there ..... All those invisible and unseen worlds ...

http://www.nature.com/news/kepler-finds-first-known-tilted-solar-system-1.13976


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## Drone (Oct 30, 2013)

*Scientists find Earth-sized rocky exoplanet*

name: *Kepler-78b*
radius: ~1.2 times that of Earth
mass: ~1.7 times that of Earth
location: ~400 ly from Earth in the constellation Cygnus

Its density is the same as Earth’s, suggesting that it also made primarily of rock and iron.
Kepler-78b orbits its star very closely every 8.5 hours, making it much too hot to support life.


----------



## TheoneandonlyMrK (Oct 30, 2013)

Drone said:


> *Scientists find Earth-sized rocky exoplanet*
> 
> name: *Kepler-78b*
> radius: ~1.2 times that of Earth
> ...


I didn't realise you had posted so many ty


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## Drone (Nov 5, 2013)

If you’ve ever wanted to know what *3538* exoplanets look like spinning around their stars, here you go!

The Latest Kepler Orrery Video


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## Drone (Nov 27, 2013)

*A team of European astronomers has discovered a second solar system, the closest parallel to our own solar system yet found.

KOI-351* is “the first system with a significant number of planets (seven) that shows a clear hierarchy like the solar system - with small, probably rocky, planets in the interior and gas giants in the exterior.









> Three of the seven planets orbiting KOI-351 have periods of 59, 210 and 331 days - similar to the periods of Mercury, Venus and Earth. But the orbital periods of these planets vary by as much as 25.7 hours. This is the highest variation detected in an exoplanet's orbital period so far, _hinting that there are more planets than meets the eye._



As you can see this systems is extremely compact, 1AU!


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## Drone (Dec 4, 2013)

Currently, studying exoplanet atmospheres can be done when the planets are passing in front of their stars. Researchers can identify the gases in a planet’s atmosphere by determining which wavelengths of the star’s light are transmitted and which are partially absorbed.

*For the first time, astronomers have found faint but clear signatures of water in the atmospheres of five exoplanets*. All five are so-called ‘hot Jupiters,’ massive worlds that orbit close to their host stars.



> *WASP-17b is an unusual planet in a retrograde orbit, and **sodium had already been detected in its atmosphere. *
> 
> *HD209458b is much-studied windy world, **with raging storms**, and **organic molecules and water had already been detected** on this planet in previous studies. *
> 
> ...


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## PopcornMachine (Dec 4, 2013)

> *XO-1b has the distinction of being discovered by amateur astronomers*




Well then, it probably has amateur lifeforms. 



Thanks for info.


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## Drone (Dec 6, 2013)

More new planets!!!!








> Weighing in at *11 times Jupiter’s mass* and orbiting its star at *650 times the average Earth-Sun distance*, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System. At only 13 million years old, this young planet still glows from the residual heat of its formation. This planet discovery is particularly exciting because it is in orbit so far from its parent star. This leads to many intriguing questions about its formation history and composition.




Three more exoplanets have been directly seen in astronomical images: FW Tau b, ROXs 42B b, ROXs 12 b.






Now we have more than 1000 exoplanets that have been confirmed and cataloged!!!






And here's nice video:


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## PopcornMachine (Dec 6, 2013)

> Weighing in at *11 times Jupiter’s mass* and orbiting its star at *650 times the average Earth-Sun distance*, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System. At only 13 million years old, this young planet still glows from the residual heat of its formation. This planet discovery is particularly exciting because it is in orbit so far from its parent star. This leads to many intriguing questions about its formation history and composition.



My guess is that big boy is going to light up and become a binary partner.


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## McSteel (Dec 6, 2013)

It's going to remain a brown dwarf - smoldering for eons but never fully light up. There are lots of those around, they're just really hard to spot.


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## Drone (Dec 10, 2013)

McSteel said:


> It's going to remain a brown dwarf - smoldering for eons but never fully light up. There are lots of those around, they're just really hard to spot.





PopcornMachine said:


> My guess is that big boy is going to light up and become a binary partner.



Here's a very good article:



> Astronomers now have observational evidence for the theoretically predicted break between very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs. They say they can point to a precise temperature, radius and luminosity of the lowest mass stars. According to these astronomers, *in order to be a star, an object must have temperature of at least 2100 K, a radius 8.7% that of our sun, and a luminosity or intrinsic brightness 1/8000th that of the sun*.



So we got a definitive answer now. If it's cold it won't be a star.


----------



## Drone (Dec 17, 2013)

A team of European astronomers confirmed the presence of *Kepler-88 c*, an unseen planet that was previously predicted thanks to the gravitational perturbation it caused on its transiting brother planet, Kepler-88 b.



> Planets that share the same host star gravitationally interact with each other. This interaction between planets can cause perturbations in the predicted times of transit of planets in multi-planetary systems.
> 
> A careful analysis of the dynamical interaction between planets predicted that Kepler-88 had two planets near a two-to-one resonance (the orbital period of the unseen outer planet Kepler-88 c is exactly two times longer than the transiting inner planet Kepler-88 b).


----------



## Drone (Jan 7, 2014)

New planet, a hotter and puffier version of Earth! It's the first transiting Earth-mass planet ever found and is the lightest alien world to have both its mass and size measured.



> *KOI-314c* is located _~ 200 ly_ away and is roughly the same mass as Earth, but its extremely thick atmosphere makes the world about 60% larger than our home planet. The planet orbits its parent red dwarf star once every 23 days. KOI-314c's surface temperature is 104 degrees Celsius.
> 
> KOI-314c is likely surrounded by a hydrogen-helium atmosphere hundreds of miles thick. This atmosphere may once have been even thicker, with much of it being boiled off into space over the eons by the red dwarf's radiation. KOI-314c has a sibling planet called KOI-314b, which completes one orbit every 13 days.


----------



## Drone (Jan 8, 2014)

Another discovered exoplanets:



> Two planets are thought to be rocky, and are named *Kepler-99b *and* Kepler-406b*. Both are 40% larger than Earth and have a density similar to lead. The planets orbit their host stars in less than five and three days respectively, making these worlds too hot for life as we know it.



And another one called Beta Pictoris b posted below. It's a very young planet - estimated to be <10 million years old (the star itself is ~ 12 million).

\/


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## qubit (Jan 9, 2014)

Now they can image them directly. Truly amazing.








> The world’s newest and most powerful exoplanet imaging instrument, the recently-installed Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) on the 8-meter Gemini South telescope, has captured its first-light infrared image of an exoplanet: Beta Pictoris b, which orbits the star Beta Pictoris, the second-brightest star in the southern constellation Pictor. The planet is pretty obvious in the image above as a bright clump of pixels just to the lower right of the star in the middle (which is physically covered by a small opaque disk to block glare.) But that cluster of pixels is really a distant planet 63 light-years away and several times more massive — as well as 60% larger — than Jupiter!
> 
> And this is only the beginning.




Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/107854/super-sensitive-camera-captures-a-direct-image-of-an-exoplanet/


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## Drone (Jan 23, 2014)

New planet found:

An international team of astronomers has discovered a new exoplanet, *Kepler-410A b*. The planet is about the size of Neptune and orbits the brightest star _Kepler-410A _in a double star system 425 ly from Earth.



> By studying the star around which the planet revolves, they found that the star's rotation appears to be well-aligned with the planetary movement. The object can be well-studied because the star is relatively bright, it can be seen if strong binoculars are used. The planet orbits one star of what appears to be a binary star, and the orbit is not circular but slightly eccentric. The planet is larger than Earth, with a radius of about 2.8 times that of our planet. With a period of around 18 days, it is much closer to its star than Earth is to our sun. Perturbations on the discovered planet indicate that there is likely another, as of yet unknown planet in the system.



__________________

And another one:

Scientists discovered rare brown dwarf HD 19467 B


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## Drone (Feb 5, 2014)

New wobbly planet discovered:








> This illustration shows the unusual orbit of planet Kepler-413b around a close pair of orange and red dwarf stars. The planet’s 66-day orbit is tilted 2.5 degrees with respect to the plane of the binary star’s orbit. Kepler-413b, precesses (wobbles) wildly on its spin axis, much like a child’s top. The tilt of the planet’s spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth’s rotational precession is a relatively tame 23.5 degrees over 26000 years.




Kepler 413-b is located 2300 ly away in the constellation Cygnus


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2014)

New exoplanet, named ULAS J222711-004547, with *red skies
*



> Newly discovered brown dwarf is characterized by an unusually thick layer of clouds, made of mineral dust. These thick clouds give ULAS J222711-004547 its extremely red colour, distinguishing it from “normal” brown dwarfs.



Lol they discover new worlds everyday!


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## McSteel (Feb 7, 2014)

Not exactly a planet, but not quite a star either. What I find amazing is this:



			
				Article said:
			
		

> “These are not the type of clouds that we are used to seeing on Earth. The thick *clouds* on this particular brown dwarf are mostly made *of mineral dust, like* enstatite and *corundum*,” stated Federico Marocco, who led the research team and is an astrophysicist at the United Kingdom’s University of Hertfordshire.



So it has an atmosphere filled with clouds of Ruby dust?! What the hell..?


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## Drone (Feb 7, 2014)

^ True, that's cool. It seems there's lot of aluminum oxide


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## PopcornMachine (Feb 7, 2014)

Cool stuff guys.  Thanks.


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## Drone (Feb 26, 2014)

^ No problem.


Another new-found exoplanet







> The newly discovered alien world, named HD 4203c, orbits its host star every 18.2 years, and has a minimum mass ~ 2.17 times that of Jupiter.
> The star HD 4203 lies in the constellation Pisces, ~ 250 ly from Earth.


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## Drone (Feb 27, 2014)

Kepler spacecraft found 715 planets orbiting 305 stars.











715 new planets. Yup it's no joke.


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## 4ghz (Feb 27, 2014)

Still haven't figured how to reach them yet, much less get out of our own solar system.  It took a probe a couple decades to get past the outtermost planet and many more years to leave solar system completely.


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## Drone (Apr 17, 2014)

I think I've sharted my pants!!! 






*Astronomers found first Earth-size planet in the habitable zone around another star
*



> The newfound planet, called *Kepler-186f*, was first spotted by NASA's Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star ~490 ly from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth's sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface.
> 
> Scientists think that Kepler-186f - the outermost of 5 planets found to be orbiting the star Kepler-186 - orbits at a distance of 52.4 million km, theoretically within the habitable zone for a red dwarf. Earth orbits the sun from an average distance of ~150 million km, but the sun is larger and brighter than the Kepler-186 star, meaning that the sun's habitable zone begins farther out from the star by comparison to Kepler-186.


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## 4ghz (Apr 17, 2014)

Now we need to get someone to build a probe with orion engine.  With luck it'd arrive in under 600 years.


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## Peter1986C (Apr 18, 2014)

Then again, wasn't Titan a disappointment too in terms of habitability?


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## rtwjunkie (Apr 18, 2014)

Chevalr1c said:


> Then again, wasn't Titan a disappointment too in terms of habitability?


 
I'm not sure.  I think Titan and Europa are still both possibilities, and recently a moon of Saturn.  We're going to actually have to send multiple probes to land on those moons to know for sure.


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## Drone (Apr 18, 2014)

Titan, Europa, Enceladus and Mars are all harsh. No magnetic field and dead cold. Maybe primitive extremophiles can survive but not human beings.


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## rtwjunkie (Apr 18, 2014)

Drone said:


> Titan, Europa, Enceladus and Mars are all harsh. No magnetic field and dead cold. Maybe primitive extremophiles can survive but not human beings.


 
True, and the magnetic field is key, but Mars more than others can be made habitable to a degree by humans, living and working indoors, and wearing suits outdoors.  With appropriate shielding, the radiation can be managed.


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## Drone (Apr 18, 2014)

rtwjunkie said:


> True, and the magnetic field is key, but Mars more than others can be made habitable to a degree by humans, living and working indoors, and wearing suits outdoors.  With appropriate shielding, the radiation can be managed.



Yup but not for a long period of time, because every shielding is wearing out eventually.

Plus weak gravity decreases eyesight and weakens bones and muscles. Nanorobots, bionics, genetic engineering and all that stuff required to make humans stronger and more adaptive. Like Hawking said if humans want to conquer space they'll need it.


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## rtwjunkie (Apr 18, 2014)

Good Stuff, Drone.


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## PopcornMachine (Apr 18, 2014)

I wouldn't expect to find anything similar to us anywhere.

Any life we find is going to be very different.

Just my theory.  Thanks for the cool info.


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## Drone (Apr 18, 2014)

PopcornMachine said:


> *I wouldn't expect to find anything similar to us anywhere.
> 
> Any life we find is going to be very different.*
> 
> Just my theory.  Thanks for the cool info.



It's hard to say exactly. Universe is really _BIG_, if it's _infinitely_ big then sooner or later patterns will repeat (cosmic web and even atom configurations). There's a possibility and if that happens it can be that somewhere sometime the other me typing the same thing on some forum. It's not actually my theory lolz but Michio Kaku said something like that. It's logical because Universe can be infinite but number of atom configurations is finite (even though it's a really big number but it's finite).


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## McSteel (Apr 18, 2014)

Marcus Chown gave this a nice mention in one of his books, see here.


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## Drone (Apr 25, 2014)

The newfound coldest brown dwarf, named *WISE J085510.83-071442.5*, has a chilly temperature between -48 to -13 degrees Celsius. It's the fourth nearest system to the Sun (7.2 ly away from Earth).

WISE J085510.83-071442.5 is estimated to be 3-10 times the mass of Jupiter. With such a low mass, it could be a gas giant similar to Jupiter that was ejected from its star system. But scientists estimate it's probably a brown dwarf rather than a planet since brown dwarfs are known to be fairly common. If so, it's one of the least massive brown dwarfs known.


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## Drone (May 13, 2014)

Gemini Planet Imager captures best photo ever of an exoplanet Beta Pictoris b







More cool news:


Astronomers discovered an exoplanet called GU Psc b which is around *2000 times the Earth-Sun distance* from its star, a record among exoplanets. Given this distance, it takes approximately *80 000 Earth years* for GU Psc b to make a complete orbit around its star!

Knowing the age (only 100 million years old) of its host star (GU Psc, a star 3 times less massive than the Sun and located in the constellation Pisces) scientists were able to determine its mass, which is 9-13 times that of Jupiter. It has a temperature of around 800°C.


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## Drone (Jun 2, 2014)

New planets:

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of planet - a rocky world weighing *17 times as much as Earth*.



> The newfound *mega-Earth*, Kepler-10c, circles a sunlike star once every 45 days. It is located ~ 560 ly from Earth in the constellation Draco. The system also hosts a 3-Earth-mass "lava world," Kepler-10b, in a remarkably fast, 20-hour orbit. Kepler-10c was known to have a diameter of ~ 18000 miles, *2.3 times as large as Earth*. The Kepler-10 system is ~ 11 billion years old, it formed less than 3 billion years after the Big Bang.


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## Drone (Jun 4, 2014)

Astronomers led Dr Guillem Anglada-Escude from Queen Mary University of London, UK, have announced the discovery of *two exoplanets circling a very old nearby star known as Kapteyn’s star*. One of the newly-discovered planets could be ripe for life as it orbits at the right distance to the star to allow liquid water on its surface.






http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-kapteyn-b-c-two-exoplanets-kapteyns-star-01965.html

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-astronomers-ancient-worlds-galaxy-door.html


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## Drone (Jul 7, 2014)

An international team of astronomers report the discovery of a new potentially habitable Super-Earth around the nearby red-dwarf star Gliese 832, 16 ly away. This star is already known to harbour a cold Jupiter-like planet, Gliese 832 b. The new planet is Gliese 832 c.

It has an orbital period of *36 days* and a mass 5.4 times that of Earth's. It receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun.

So far, the two planets of Gliese 832 are a scaled-down version of our own Solar System, with an inner potentially Earth-like planet and an outer Jupiter-like giant planet. The giant planet may well have played a similar dynamical role in the Gliese 832 system to that played by Jupiter in our Solar System.


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## Frick (Jul 7, 2014)

I've colonized tons of Glieses in my days.


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## Drone (Jul 7, 2014)

An international team of astronomers has discovered a planet 3000 ly away, orbiting one of two stars in a binary system. They used the technique of gravitational microlensing to find the planet. The planet is not thought to be habitable, but it does orbit in a zone reminiscent of the habitable zone around our sun. These astronomers say their technique can be used to search other binary star systems for potentially habitable planets.






This newly found world - called OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb - has twice the mass of Earth. The planet’s host star is much dimmer than the sun.


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## Drone (Jul 21, 2014)

Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. *Kepler-421b* circles its star once every *704 days*. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days.

Kepler-421b orbits an orange, type K star that is cooler and dimmer than our Sun. It circles the star at a distance of ~ 110 million miles. As a result, this Uranus-sized planet is chilled to a temperature of -135° Fahrenheit.

The planet's orbit places it beyond the "snow line" - the dividing line between rocky and gas planets. Outside of the snow line, water condenses into ice grains that stick together to build gas giant planets.

The host star, Kepler-421, is located ~ 1000 ly from Earth in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

Source


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## Drone (Aug 18, 2014)




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## 64K (Aug 18, 2014)

There are billions of galaxies with billions of stars which probably have planets. imo it's a bit arrogant for humans to think that we are so special that their isn't intelligent life outside of the Earth. The vast distances that separate intelligent life is the obstacle and even if we developed faster than light travel it would still take millions of years to explore every solar system. I'm unclear about the current measurement of the universe being about 14 billion light years in diameter. What if there are galaxies that are 15, 20, 30 billion light years distance and the light from those galaxies hasn't reached Earth yet.


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## Drone (Aug 18, 2014)

^ The diameter of observable Universe is about 92 billion ly. The age of the Universe is about 13.8 billion years because it's expanding.

And yup, we aren't special at all.


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## Drone (Oct 17, 2014)

*An ice giant that resembles Uranus has been discovered ~ 25000 ly from Earth.
*
The planet, labeled OGLE-2008-BLG-092LAb has a mass of ~4 times that of Uranus. It's part of a binary star system in the constellation Sagittarius. The first star in the system, 092LA, is ~2/3 as massive as our Sun, and the second star, 092LB, is ~1/6 as massive. The planet orbits 092LA at 18 AU - almost exactly the same distance as Uranus orbits the Sun.

Astronomers discovered this planetary system due to a phenomenon called gravitational microlensing – when the gravity of a star focuses the light from a more distant star and magnifies it like a lens. Very rarely, the signature of a planet orbiting the lens star appears within that magnified light signal.

In this case, there were two separate microlensing events, one in 2008 that revealed 092LA and suggested the presence of the planet, and one in 2010 that confirmed the presence of the planet and revealed the second star, 092LB.


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## McSteel (Oct 17, 2014)

Drone said:


> An ice giant that resembles *Uranus*



That planet has such an unfortunate name in modern English... I giggled.

(yes, yes I know it's infantile)


----------



## Drone (Dec 19, 2014)

An international team of astronomers using NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered a new exoplanet, named HIP 116454b.

HIP 116454b is located in the constellation Pisces, ~ 180 ly from Earth.
It is a super-Earth exoplanet, with a diameter of 32000 km (2.5 times the size of Earth) and a mass of almost 12 times that of Earth.
It circles a K1-type orange dwarf star, HIP 116454, once every 9.1 days at a distance of 13.5 million km.


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## VulkanBros (Jan 7, 2015)

"most Earth-like alien world"

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30705517


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## Drone (Jan 7, 2015)

Gemini made direct images of two planetary systems:










HR 4796A with dusty ring







HR 8799 with 3 planets (located 130 ly away from us)


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## Drone (Jan 18, 2015)

Astronomers using Kepler Space Telescope have discovered *three super-Earth exoplanets* orbiting a star called EPIC 201367065.






EPIC 201367065 is a red M-dwarf ~ half the size and mass of our Sun. It lies at a distance of 147 ly.
*The three exoplanets are 2.1, 1.7 and 1.5 times the size of Earth*.
In order from closest to farthest to their star, the exoplanets receive 10.5, 3.2 and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth.


******************************

At least two planets larger than Earth likely lurk in the dark depths of space far beyond Pluto, just waiting to be discovered.






The potential undiscovered worlds would be more massive than Earth and would lie so far away that they'd be very difficult, if not impossible, to spot with current instruments. 2012 VP113 and Sedna are two known denizens of the inner Oort Cloud. Their orbits are consistent with the continued presence of a big "perturber" [perhaps a planet 10 times more massive than Earth that lies 250 AU from the sun].


----------



## VulkanBros (Jan 18, 2015)

Interesting indeed.....


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## Drone (Jan 28, 2015)

Planet J1407b is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn, and its *ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn's rings* are today. This gigantic ring system is eclipsing the young sun-like star J1407.

Astronomers found ancient star system Kepler-444. It's *11.2 billion years old* and hosts *five planets smaller than Earth*, with sizes varying between those of Mercury and Venus.


----------



## Drone (Feb 13, 2015)

Astronomers Discover New Super-Jupiter Exoplanet Kepler-432b

It's ~ 2850 ly away. It's one of the most dense and massive planets known so far. The planet has a mass 5.84 times that of Jupiter and orbits its parent star, the red giant Kepler-432, in 52 Earth days.

The host star, Kepler-432, has already exhausted the nuclear fuel in its core and is gradually expanding. Its radius is already 4 times that of our Sun and it will get even larger in the future. The orbit brings the planet incredibly close to Kepler-432 at some times and much farther away at others, thus creating enormous temperature differences over the course of the planet's year (500 C during the winter season and 1000 C in the short summer season). 

*The days of Kepler-432b are numbered. In < 200 million years, the planet will be swallowed by its continually expanding host star.
*


Another *red giant* orbited by a Jupiter-mass planet called Kepler-91b on an orbit of 6.2 days was discovered in 2013.




250 Years of Planetary Detection in 60 S


----------



## Drone (Oct 9, 2015)

Astronomers Create Habitability Index for Transiting Exoplanets

The habitability of an exoplanet is traditionally assessed by comparing a planet's semi-major axis to the location of its parent star's ‘*habitable zone*’ – the shell around a star for which terrestrial planets can possess liquid surface water.

In creating it, the scientists factored in estimates of a planet's *rockiness*, rocky planets being the more Earth-like.

They also accounted for a phenomenon called ‘*eccentricity-albedo degeneracy*,’ which comments on a sort of balancing act between the a planet's albedo – the energy reflected back to space from its surface – and the circularity of its orbit, which affects how much energy it receives from its host star.

A life-friendly energy equilibrium for a planet near the inner edge of the habitable zone – in danger of being too hot for life, would be a higher albedo, to cool the world by reflecting some of that heat into space. Conversely, a planet near the cool outer edge of the habitable zone would perhaps need a higher level of orbital eccentricity to provide the energy needed for life.


----------



## Drone (Oct 15, 2015)

KIC 8462852, located 1480 ly from us, produced a series of bizarre light fluctuations, scientists cannot explain. A theory suggest that a *megastructure* is obscuring the light from it.






Over the duration of the Kepler mission, KIC 8462852 was observed to undergo irregularly shaped, aperiodic dips in flux down to below the 20% level. The dipping activity can last for between 5 and 80 days.


----------



## Drone (Oct 21, 2015)

Earth came early to the party in the evolving universe. According to a new theoretical study, when our solar system was born 4.6 billion years ago only 8% of the potentially habitable planets that will ever form in the universe existed. And, the party won't be over when the sun burns out in another 6 billion years. The bulk of those planets - 92% - have yet to be born.

There is enough remaining material [after the Big Bang] to produce even more planets in the future, in the Milky Way and beyond.

Based on the survey, scientists predict that there should be 1 billion Earth-sized worlds in the Milky Way galaxy at present, a good portion of them presumed to be rocky. That estimate skyrockets when you include the other 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

*The observational evidence for the Big Bang and cosmic evolution, encoded in light and other electromagnetic radiation, will be all but erased away 1 trillion years from now due to the runaway expansion of space. Any far-future civilizations that might arise will be largely clueless as to how or if the universe began and evolved.
*
The last star isn't expected to burn out until 100 trillion years from now. That's plenty of time for literally anything to happen on the planet landscape.


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## McSteel (Oct 21, 2015)

So, we're basically enjoying exclusive early-access universe...
No wonder physics is struggling to expose and make sense of the underlying engine - the game is still in development 

I wonder what form will late-development intelligent life take... Wish we could transcend mortality and distances and witness it first-hand.


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## Drone (Oct 21, 2015)

I'm not fond of anthropic principle but it does seem that we live in some 'special' era. Yeah, it's some early-access beta version but I don't think that engine will be changed maybe some bugfixes and stuff.










In the meanwhile distant worlds still amaze me:






A team of astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany, has created a video that shows the evolution of stellar spots on the red giant star *XX Triangulum* (aka HD 12545) It's an active K0 giant star located ~ 1500 ly away toward the constellation Triangulum. This star is approximately 10 times larger and twice as massive as the Sun.


And two new worlds:






A team of U.S. astronomers has made a surprising discovery using data collected by NASA's Kepler/K2 mission: a star called WASP-47, a previously known hot Jupiter exoplanet host, also hosts two additional exoplanets – a Neptune-sized outer planet and a super-Earth inner companion.

WASP-47 also known as 2MASS J22044873-1201079, is a G-type main sequence star, slightly smaller and cooler than our Sun at a distance of 652 ly.

One of the newfound exoplanets, WASP-47d, is about the size of Neptune and orbits the star in about 9 days.

The second newly-discovered planet, WASP-47e, is a so-called super-Earth that whips around the star in a mere 19 hours.

The hot Jupiter WASP-47b orbits its parent star every 4.16 days.


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## Drone (Oct 22, 2015)

Astronomers announced today that they have spotted a *large, rocky object disintegrating in its death spiral around a distant white dwarf star*.

The object is in an orbit about 520,000 miles from the white dwarf (about twice the distance from the Earth to the Moon). It is the first planetary object to be seen transiting a white dwarf. The white dwarf star is located ~ 570 ly from Earth in the constellation Virgo.


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## Drone (Oct 28, 2015)

HD 106906AB is a double star located in the constellation of Crux. This 13 million-year-old stellar duo and the disc are also accompanied by an exoplanet, visible in the upper right, named HD 106906 b, which orbits around the binary star and its disc at a distance greater than any other exoplanet discovered to date *650 AU*, or ~ 97 billion km. HD 106906 b has a mammoth mass of up to 11 times that of Jupiter, and a scorching surface temperature of 1500 degrees Celsius.


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## Drone (Oct 29, 2015)

Ground-based telescopes have photographed two large-scale spiral arms around two young stars, SAO 206462 and MWC 758.

Astronomers are proposing that huge spiral patterns seen around some newborn stars, merely a few million years old (~ 1% our Sun's age), may be evidence for the presence of giant unseen planets. This idea not only opens the door to a new method of planet detection, but also could offer a look into the early formative years of planet birth.






To make the grand-scale spiral arms seen in the SAO 206462 and MWC 758 systems, the unseen planet would have to be bulky, at least 10 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.


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## Drone (Oct 31, 2015)

new video











This new NASA video shows behind-the-scenes footage of the heart of the James Webb Space Telescope as an engineering team lifted and lowered it into the giant thermal vacuum chamber at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. This final super cold test at Goddard will prepare the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM), or the “heart” of the telescope, for space.


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## Drone (Nov 1, 2015)

Hubble Peels Back the Layers of a Warm Neptune











About 30 ly away, a Neptune-sized planet named GJ 436b is having some of its layers peeled back.


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## Drone (Nov 3, 2015)

*Layers of clouds, made up of hot dust and droplets of molten iron*, have been detected on a planet-like object - known as PSO J318.5-22 - which is estimated to be ~ 20 million-years-old.

PSO J318.5-22 lies 75 ly from us and it does not orbit a star. It's around the same size as Jupiter but is roughly 8 times more massive.

It's covered in multiple layers of thick and thin clouds. Temperatures inside clouds on PSO J318.5-22 exceed *800°C*, researchers say.


*****

http://orig05.deviantart.net/de26/f/2015/294/d/9/exoplanetsmall_by_jaysimons-d9dv6v1.jpg


This poster shows > 500 exoplanets discovered before October 2015 arranged according to their temperature and density. Credit and copyright: Martin Vargic.


text has some errors but whatever ...


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Nov 11, 2015)

A rocky, oven-hot Earth-sized world that may have its own atmosphere has been spotted orbiting a small nearby star.



The planet, named GJ1132b, is around 1.2 times the size of Earth and appears to be predominantly composed of rock and iron. It is the closest Earth-sized planet to be discovered beyond our own solar system and is three times closer than those spotted previously.  Astronomers have described the new world as 'arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system'. 

GJ1132b orbits its host star – a small M-dwarf star called Gliese 1132 – at a far closer distance than the Earth is to the sun, meaning it receives about 19 times the level of radiation.  




The experts said the planet is likely to have a predominantly helium and hydrogen atmosphere, but if there had been water on the surface in the planet's past, it could also have oxygen and carbon dioxide.

However, the astronomers warn that it is currently impossible to draw any firm conclusions about what the planet's atmosphere is like.

Instead, they claim the close proximity of the planet – which is around 39 light years from our own – could allow it to be directly observed using the next generation of space telescopes.

Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Zachory Berta-Thompson, an astrophysicst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues said the James Webb Space Telescope, which is due to launch in 2018, could measure the light coming from the planet to give more details about its atmosphere.





GJ1132b is around 16 per cent larger than Earth but its star, Gliese 1132 is just a fifth of the size of our sun (illustrated). However, as it orbits closer to its small star, the planet receives far more radiation


Astronomers estimate the star which the new planet is orbiting is around 21 per cent the size of our own sun. The planet was discovered using the MEarth-South telescope array, which monitors several thousand red dwarf stars located within 100 light-years of Earth. It looks for planets that pass in front of their host stars, causing the light to dim slightly. The next nearest rocky Earth-sized planets to be discovered are around 127 light years away. The astronomers behind the discovery of GJ1132b found it has a diameter of around 9,200 miles - about 16 per cent larger than the Earth – and 60 per cent more mass, suggesting it is rocky. The planet also has an Earth-like gravity and someone standing on the surface of the planet would weigh around 20 per cent more than they do on Earth. David Charbonnneau, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who took part in the research, said the planet was probably more like a large Venus than Earth.
He said: 'Our ultimate goal is to find a twin Earth, but along the way we've found a twin Venus. 'We suspect it will have a Venus-like atmosphere too, and if it does we can't wait to get a whiff.'

Writing in the journal Nature, Drake Deming, an astronomer at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, said: 'The discovery of GJ 1132b, arguably the most important planet ever found outside the Solar System. 'The significance of this new world derives from several factors. It has a radius only 16% larger than Earth’s and a matching density of 6 grams per cubic centimetre. 'Moreover, Gliese 1132, the red dwarf star around which the planet orbits, lies only 12 parsecs from the Sun — a distance that will allow astronomers to study the planet with unprecedented fidelity.'





The discovery was made using the MEarth-South telescope array (pictured), which monitors several thousand red dwarf stars located within 100 light-years of Earth. It looks for planets that pass in front of their host stars, causing the light to dim slightly
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/MEarth/gj1132b.html


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## Drone (Nov 11, 2015)

CAPSLOCKSTUCK said:


> A rocky, oven-hot Earth-sized world that may have its own atmosphere has been spotted orbiting a small nearby star.
> 
> 
> 
> The planet, named GJ1132b, is around 1.2 times the size of Earth and appears to be predominantly composed of rock and iron. It is the closest Earth-sized planet to be discovered beyond our own solar system and is three times closer than those spotted previously.  Astronomers have described the new world as 'arguably the most important planet ever found outside the solar system'.



Yeah that's right another day another exoplanet. A couple of details that article didn't cover:

GJ 1132b orbits a *red dwarf star only 1/5th the size of our Sun*. The star is also cooler and much fainter than the Sun, *emitting just 1/200th as much light*. GJ 1132b circles its star every *1.6 days at a distance of 1.4 million miles (much closer than the 36-million-mile orbit of Mercury in our solar system).
*
Link and diagram

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2015-24


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## Drone (Nov 13, 2015)

Winds of over *2 km/s* have been discovered flowing around exoplanet *HD 189733b*. The wind speed recorded is 20x greater than the fastest ever known on earth, where it would be *seven times the speed of sound*. This discovery is the first time that a *weather system on an exoplanet* has been directly measured and mapped.

Commenting on the discovery lead researcher Tom Louden, of the University of Warwick's Astrophysics group, said:

HD 189733b's velocity was measured using high resolution spectroscopy of the Sodium absorption featured in its atmosphere. As parts of HD 189733b's atmosphere move towards or away from the Earth the Doppler effect changes the wavelength of this feature, which allows the velocity to be measured.
*The surface of the star is brighter at the center than it is at the edge, so as the planet moves in front of the star the relative amount of light blocked by different parts of the atmosphere changes*. For the first time we've used this information to measure the velocities on opposite sides of the planet independently, which gives us our velocity map.






The planet is shown at three positions as it crosses its parent star. The changing background illumination allows us to separate absorption from different parts of the planetary atmosphere. By measuring the Doppler shift of the absorption we are able to measure wind velocities. The blue-shaded region of the atmosphere is moving toward the Earth at 12000 mph, while the red-shaded region is moving away from the earth at 5000 mph. *After correcting for the expected spin of the planet we measure a wind velocity of 5400 mph on the blue side, indicating a strong eastward wind flow from the heated day side to the night side of the planet*.



*HD 189733b is one of the most studied of a class of planets known as 'Hot Jupiters'. At over 10% larger than Jupiter, but 180x closer to its star, HD 189733b has a temperature of 1800C. The day side of the planet would appear a bright shade of blue to the human eye, probably due to clouds of silicate particles high in its atmosphere.*


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## Drone (Nov 13, 2015)

GPI data has revealed that *51 Eri b*, the recently discovered Jupiter-like exoplanet around the nearby star _51 Eridani_, indeed has an *atmosphere of methane and water*, and likely has a _mass twice that of Jupiter_.













The team has also discovered and imaged _disks of dusty debris around several stars_. Astronomers believe that these are _planetary systems that are still forming their planets. Some have complex structures because they host planets and fragments of the asteroidal and cometary materials that formed those planets_. One such system is *HD 131835*: a _massive 15 Myr-old star located 400 ly from us_. Using GPI's high-contrast capability, the team imaged this disk for the first time in near-infrared light in May 2015.




“The disk shows different morphology when observed in different wavelengths. Unlike the extended disk previously imaged in thermal emission, our GPI observations show a disk that has a _ring-like structure_, indicating that the _large grains are distributed differently from the small ones_. In addition, we discovered an _*asymmetry in the disk along its major axis*_. What causes this disk to be asymmetric is the subject of ongoing investigation, “ said Li-Wei Hung, a graduate student in the UCLA Department of Physics and Astronomy and lead author of the article submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters. _As asymmetries like the one seen in the system may be due to the gravitational influence of an unseen planet, more detailed observational study could one day confirm its existence._


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## Drone (Nov 19, 2015)

CfA astronomers have announced the discovery of *HAT-P-55b, a transiting hot-Jupiter around a star that is very similar to the Sun*; _the star's mass and radius differ from the Sun's values by only a few percent_. Using additional observations to follow-up the transit discovery, the scientists determined that the *exoplanet itself has a mass of 0.582 Jupiter-masses, a radius of 1.182 Jupiter-radii, and an orbital period of 3.585 days* – and obtained an overall precision in its density of better than 10%. Only about 140 exoplanets have densities measured with this remarkable precision, and the new result significantly supplements the database for exoplanets, and hot-Jupiters in particular.


************


There are 450 ly between Earth and LkCa15, a young star with a transition disk around it, a cosmic whirling dervish, a birthplace for planets.

Despite the disk's considerable distance from Earth and its gaseous, dusty atmosphere, University of Arizona researchers captured the *first photo of a planet in the making*, _a planet residing in a gap in LkCa15's disk_.






_Of the roughly _*2000*_ known exoplanets only about _*10*_ have been imaged, and that was long after they had formed, not when they were in the making_.










Protoplanetary disks form around young stars using the debris left over from the star's formation. It is suspected that planets then form inside the disk, sweeping up dust and debris as the material falls onto the planets instead of staying in the disk or falling onto the star. A gap is then cleared in which planets can reside.


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## Drone (Feb 1, 2016)

Astronomers studying a lonely planet drifting through space have found its mum; a star a trillion kilometers away.

*The planet 2MASS J2126-8140 has an orbit around its host red dwarf star called TYC 9486-927-1 that takes nearly a million Earth years and is > 140 times wider than Pluto's*. This makes it easily the largest solar system ever found.

Only a handful of extremely wide pairs of this kind have been found in recent years. *The distance between the new pair is 6900 AU* - _10^12 km_ or *0.1 ly* - nearly three times the previous widest pair, which is 2500AU (370,000,000,000 km). 2MASS J2126-8140 is a gas giant planet ~ 12-15 times the mass of Jupiter.

This gas giant and its host star are ~ 100 ly away. They formed 10-45 million years ago from a filament of gas. They must not have lived their lives in a very dense environment. They are so tenuously bound together that any nearby star would have disrupted their orbit completely.






Arrows show motion over next 1000 years.


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## Drone (Feb 13, 2016)

Gemini Confirms a Free-Floating Planet PSO J318.5-22

An extremely red planetary-mass object is confirmed, based on Gemini observations, to be a free-floating member of the Beta Pictoris moving group.




​Estimates of the mass of such objects are extremely sensitive to age, so confirmation of the group membership yields a more reliable mass: 8.3 ± 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter, with an effective temperature of 1127 K. The Gemini spectra reveal that the body rotates at between 5-10.2 hours and its radial velocity (- 6.4 ± 1.7 km/s) is within the envelope expected for members of the group. PSO J318.5-22 is 23±3 Myr old.


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## Drone (Feb 13, 2016)

Exoplanets keep spamming the cosmos lol. Two new interesting images from ALMA:




*The dust ring possibly sculpted by planets* around the star Sz 91, at a distance _~ 650 ly_ from Earth. Sz 91 has only half of the mass of our Sun. The dust ring is surprisingly large, > 3 times the size of Neptune's orbit (a radius of _~ 110 AU_).
Planets are born in dust and gas disks that surround young stars and feed them with matter. The _giant planets_ carve the protoplanetary disk, creating a “hole” in the innermost part of the disk, and preventing mm-sized dust particles (like grains of sand on a beach) from continuing their journey towards the central star. At the same time, dust particles in the outermost parts of the disk are moving inward by the combined action of gravity and aerodynamic forces (gas-drag).




Astronomers took a new, detailed look at the planet-forming disk around HD 142527, a binary star ~ 450 ly from Earth.
HD 142527 consists of a main star a little more than twice the mass of our Sun and a smaller companion star only ~ 1/3 the mass of our Sun. They are separated by a little more than the distance from the Sun to Saturn.






ALMA's new, high-resolution images  show a broad elliptical ring around HD 142527. The disk begins incredibly far from the central star ~ 50 AU. Most of it consists of gases, including two forms of carbon monoxide (13CO and C18O) [blue and green], but there is a _noticeable dearth of gases within a huge arc of dust_ (red) that extends nearly a third of the way around the star system. The temperature is so low that the gas turns into ice and sticks to the grains. This process is thought to increase the capacity for dust grains to stick together, making it a strong catalyst for the formation of planets.


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## Drone (Feb 17, 2016)

Maaaan, I remember when 6 years ago Kepler detected 5 hot Jupiters in 6 weeks! Now WASP [Wide Angle Search for Planets] does the same!




​5 transiting hot Jupiters discovered using WASP-South, Euler and TRAPPIST: WASP-119 b, WASP-124 b, WASP-126 b, WASP-129 b and WASP-133 b

The planets discovered are hot Jupiter systems with orbital periods in the range *2.17-5.75 days*, masses from *0.3MJup-1.2MJup* and with radii from *1RJup-1.5RJup*. These planets orbit bright stars (V = 11-13) with spectral types in the range *F9-G4*.

1) With a mass of 1.2 of the mass of Jupiter, and an orbital period of 2.5 days, *WASP-119 b* is a typical hot Jupiter. Its host star has a similar mass to the sun's but appears to be much older based on its effective temperature and density.

2) *WASP-124 b *is less massive than Jupiter (0.6MJup), has orbital period of 3.4 days and a much younger parent star.

3) *WASP-126 b* orbits the brightest star in this sample. It's a low-mass planet with a large radius (0.3MJup, 0.95RJup), making it a good target for transmission spectroscopy.

4) Similar in size to Jupiter, *WASP-129 b* has the longest orbital period. Its surface gravity is also high compared to other known 'hot Jupiters'. The high density of its host star WASP-129 A suggests that it's a helium-rich star similar to HAT-P-11 A.

5) *WASP-133 b* has the shortest orbital period of the exoplanets presented in the study. It's slightly bigger than Jupiter (1.2MJup, 1.2RJup). Its host star WASP-133 has an enhanced surface lithium abundance compared to other old G-type stars, particularly other planet host stars.




​Don't take the images seriously


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## blobster21 (Feb 17, 2016)

i'm putting this thread on my bookmarks, i will have to review it from page 1 later today. great source of knowledge !


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## Drone (Feb 17, 2016)

blobster21 said:


> i'm putting this thread on my bookmarks, i will have to review it from page 1 later today. great source of knowledge !


Take your time, but in the meanwhile ... 


The international team, led by scientists from University College London (UCL) in the UK, took observations of the nearby exoplanet 55 Cancri e, *a super-Earth with a mass of 8 Earth-masses*. It's located in the planetary system of 55 Cancri, a star ~ 40 ly from Earth.












Using observations made with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the scientists were able to analyze the atmosphere of this exoplanet. This makes it the _first detection of gases in the atmosphere of a super-Earth_. The results revealed the presence of hydrogen and helium, but no water vapor. The observations of 55 Cancri e's atmosphere suggest that the planet has managed to cling on to a significant amount of hydrogen and helium from the nebula from which it originally formed.

Super-Earths like 55 Cancri e are thought to be the most common type of planet in our galaxy. 55 Cancri e, however, is an unusual super-Earth as it orbits very close to its parent star. A year on the exoplanet lasts for only 18 hours and temperatures on the surface are thought to reach around 2000 degrees Celsius.

Intriguingly, the data also contain hints of the presence of *hydrogen cyanide*, a marker for carbon-rich atmospheres.

“Such an amount of hydrogen cyanide would indicate an atmosphere with a very high ratio of carbon to oxygen,” said Olivia Venot, KU Leuven, who developed an atmospheric chemical model of 55 Cancri e that supported the analysis of the observations.

“If the presence of hydrogen cyanide and other molecules is confirmed in a few years time by the next generation of infrared telescopes, it would support the theory that this planet is indeed carbon rich and a very exotic place,” concludes Jonathan Tennyson, UCL. “Although hydrogen cyanide, or prussic acid, is highly poisonous, so it is perhaps not a planet I would like to live on!”


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Feb 17, 2016)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

epic stuff.


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## Drone (Feb 17, 2016)

Evidently there's no direct image of 55 Cancri e. But I'll post some diagrams:







55 Cancri is in the constellation of Cancer. The star is visible to the naked eye, though better through binoculars. So if you have clear skies and some luck you can see the star, not the planet though lol.

Here's an accurate map of our solar neighborhood


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## Drone (Feb 19, 2016)

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have measured the rotation rate of an extreme exoplanet by observing the varied brightness in its atmosphere. The researchers attribute the brightness variation to complex cloud patterns in the planet's atmosphere. The new Hubble measurements not only verify the presence of these clouds, but also show that the cloud layers are patchy and colorless.




The planet, called *2M1207b*, is ~ 4 times more massive than Jupiter and is dubbed a "super-Jupiter." It's a companion to a brown dwarf called 2M1207, orbiting the object at a distance of 5 billion miles. The system resides 170 ly away from us.

The observations revealed that the exoplanet's atmosphere is hot enough to have "rain" clouds made of silicates: vaporized rock that cools down to form tiny particles with sizes similar to those in cigarette smoke. Deeper into the atmosphere, iron droplets are forming and falling like rain, eventually evaporating as they enter the lower levels of the atmosphere.

*So at higher altitudes it rains glass, and at lower altitudes it rains iron*. The atmospheric temperatures are between ~ 2200-2600 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet is hot because it's only ~ 10 million years old and is still contracting and cooling. The planet, however, will not maintain these sizzling temperatures. Over the next few billion years, the object will cool and fade dramatically. As its temperature decreases, the iron and silicate clouds will also form lower and lower in the atmosphere and will eventually disappear from view.

2M1207 completes one rotation approximately every 10 hours, spinning at about the same fast rate as Jupiter. This super-Jupiter is only ~ 5-7 times less massive than its brown-dwarf host. By contrast, our sun is ~ 1000 times more massive than Jupiter. The planets orbiting our sun formed inside a circumstellar disk through accretion. But the super-Jupiter and its companion may have formed throughout the _gravitational collapse of a pair of separate disks_.


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## Drone (Feb 25, 2016)

Astronomers have discovered a new exoplanet called K2-25b.








The planet orbits a red dwarf. The star is located in the Hyades star cluster, the closest open star cluster to Earth. Its stars are young, so their planets must be young, too. The planet is 4 times the size of Earth, or about the size of Neptune. The planet's large size for its parent star suggests that the planet might have a puffy hydrogen and helium atmosphere. Radiation from the star could slowly strip away this atmosphere over time.


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## Drone (Feb 29, 2016)

A team of researchers has created a computer model of the known universe and in using it to estimate the number of likely other exoplanets able to hold life, has found that there might be fewer Earth-like planets than has been thought.

The team took a logical approach in creating their model, first inputting data that described as much as is known about the early universe - then next adding data about known exoplanets and also information describing the laws of physics and the way they would work on the elements that made up the universe, and how they would grow or change over approximately 13.8 Gyr. They then took a virtual census and found the model had "created" ~ *700 quintillion* *exoplanets* - but, to the surprise of the researchers, the vast majority of them were far older than planet Earth.

If life began on other planets far earlier (8±1 Gyr) than on Earth it should have matured beyond what we have here on Earth to the point that it would be not only noticeable to us, but likely dominant. But because we have not seen any sign of other life, it appears likely that none is there, or is close enough to spot, which suggests that Earth actually is much more unique than other recent models have been suggesting. The model also suggested that _most exoplanets likely exist in galaxies that are a lot bigger than the Milky Way, and orbit stars that are quite different from our sun_. To date, space scientists have identified ~ 2000 exoplanets, clearly a very small proportion of the total amount if the new model is to be viewed as accurate.


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## Drone (Mar 10, 2016)

A team of Chilean astronomers recently detected *2 'hot Jupiters'* using the data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. The planets, designated EPIC210957318b & EPIC212110888b, were discovered via the _radial velocity method_.

According to the paper, the smaller planet of the newly discovered duo [EPIC210957318b], orbits its parent sun-like star [slightly metal rich G dwarf with Teff=5675K], located ~ 970 ly from us, every 4.1 days. The mass of this exoplanet is between the Saturn and Jupiter masses (0.65 MJ) and its radius is 1.07 RJ. The temperatures on this planet range from 584 to 939 degrees Celsius.

EPIC212110888b is more massive and larger than Jupiter (1.63 MJ; 1.38 RJ). This planet orbits its host star every 3 days with temperatures spanning from 932 to 1430 degrees Celsius. The star, slightly more massive than Sun [late F dwarf solar metallicity star with Teff=6149K], lies some 1270 ly away from us.

Both planets have similar densities, close to half of Jupiter's.


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## Drone (Mar 14, 2016)

Good news: NASA's Kepler Space Telescope's got a new lease on life:

_Engineers developed an innovative way to stabilize and control the spacecraft. This technique of using the sun as the "third wheel" has Kepler searching for planets again, but also making discoveries on young stars to supernovae_.


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## Drone (Mar 15, 2016)

Giant exoplanets keep popping up. Those popped up in December 2015. And now others:






An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of 4 new giant exoplanets orbiting stars much bigger than our Sun.

The researchers were monitoring a sample of 166 bright giant stars that are observable from the southern hemisphere. Astronomers have computed a series of _precision radial velocities_ of 4 giant stars: _*HIP8541, HIP74890, HIP84056 *_and _*HIP95124*_. By studying the periodic radial velocity signals, they have detected the presence of several substellar companions.

HIP8541b is the most massive of the newly found quartet of planets. With a mass of ∼ 5.5 MJ, this exoplanet also has a much longer orbital period than the other three worlds, equal to 1560 days. Its parent star is slightly more massive than the Sun and has a radius of nearly 8 _R_⊙.

The masses of other three planets - HIP74890b, HIP84056b and HIP95124b - are 2.4; 2.6 and 2.9 MJ respectively. Their orbital periods last nearly 819; 822 and 562 days respectively.

Their host stars (HIP 74890 and HIP 84056) are also of similar mass (1.7 M☉) and size (5.77 and 5.03 _R_⊙). Star HIP95124 is ∼ 2 times more massive than the Sun, with a radius of 5.12 _R_⊙.

Scientists conclude that *giant planets are preferentially formed around metal-rich stars*. Also, they conclude that they are more efficiently formed around more massive stars, in the mass range of M⋆ ∼ 1.0 - 2.1 M⊙.


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## Drone (Mar 18, 2016)

Astronomers were able to detect a signal of reflected light from eccentric exoplanet known as HD 20782 as it made its closest orbital approach to its star.

HD 20782 is ∼ 117 ly from us. It has the most eccentric orbit known, measured at an eccentricity of .96. This means that the planet moves in a nearly flattened ellipse, traveling a long path far from its star and then making a fast and furious slingshot around the star at its closest approach.

At the furthest point in its orbit, the planet is separated from its star by 2.5 AU. At its closest approach, it ventures as close as .06 AU (much closer than Mercury).
It's around the mass of Jupiter, but it's swinging around its star like it's a comet.

The percentage of light reflected from a planet is determined in part by the composition of its atmosphere. Planets shrouded in clouds full of *icy particles*, like Venus and Jupiter, for instance, are very reflective. But if a planet like Jupiter were to move too close to the Sun, the heat would remove the icy material in its clouds.

In some of the extrasolar, Jupiter-sized planets that tread short, circular orbits this phenomenon does appear to strip the atmospheres of reflective particles, making the planets appear "dark." But in the case of HD 20782, the atmosphere of the planet doesn't have a chance to respond. The time it takes to swing around the star is so quick that there isn't time to remove all the icy materials that make the atmosphere so reflective. Astronomers can't determine the exact makeup of HD 20782's atmosphere yet, but this newest observation does suggest that it might have an atmosphere with Jupiter-like, highly reflective cloud cover.


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## Drone (Mar 19, 2016)

Cool new video by ScienceAtNasa










Little bit about our own Solar System's moons


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## Drone (Mar 28, 2016)

HD 80606 b is about the size of Jupiter, though 4 times as massive, and resides in a system 190 ly from us, in the constellation Ursa Major.










This massive gas giant planet is in an extremely eccentric orbit around one star in a wide binary system, and experiences a more than 800-fold change in illumination over the course of each orbit.

HD 80606 b spends 111 days of its year traveling an oblong route away from and then returning toward its star. At its closest approach, the star-facing side of the planet boils up to an extreme *1400 K*. Surprisingly, the planet cools in fewer than 10 hours as it orbits away.

The planet's rotation rate [the length of its day] is estimated to be 90 hours.


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## Caring1 (Mar 29, 2016)

Drone said:


> At its closest approach, the star-facing side of the planet boils up to an extreme *1400 K*. Surprisingly, the planet cools in fewer than 10 hours as it orbits away.


Much like the prison planet in Chronicles of Riddick.
It's got me beat how a planet can go through such extremes and still be in one piece.


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## Drone (Mar 29, 2016)

Caring1 said:


> It's got me beat how a planet can go through such extremes and still be in one piece.



It's a gas giant. It can withstand anything. In fact, extremely large gas giants are called failed stars.

If it was rocky ... 1200 C is enough to melt rocks and minerals


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## dorsetknob (Mar 29, 2016)

Caring1 said:


> Much like the prison planet in Chronicles of Riddick.


 Or the Australian Outback    ( is there much difference  ..)


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## dorsetknob (Mar 29, 2016)

Drone said:


> It's a gas giant. It can withstand anything. In fact, extremely large gas giants are called failed stars.



Jupiter is often referred to as sols failed little sister >>> a failed Star
as it Outputs more heat that it receives from sol Not quite big enough for Fusion to fully occur But definitely something is heating the core so its outputting more energy than it receives

THINK  Arther C Clark  2001 /2010   and the black monolith (  big Star fire lighter )


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## Drone (Mar 31, 2016)

Good news 

NASA Selects Instrument Team to Build Next-Gen Planet Hunter

The instrument, named *NEID* (NN-EXPLORE Exoplanet Investigations with Doppler Spectroscopy) will measure the tiny back-and-forth wobble of a star caused by the gravitational tug of a planet in orbit around it. The wobble tells scientists there is a planet orbiting the star, and the size of the wobble indicates how massive the planet is.

The NEID instrument, to be completed in *2019*, will be installed on the 3.5-m WIYN telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.


Even more good news! 

The *SETI* Institute has inaugurated a greatly expanded hunt for deliberately produced radio signals that would indicate the presence of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Over the course of the next two years, it will scrutinize the vicinities of 20000 so-called red dwarf stars.






And a final strike to finish this amazing combo 

*The most detailed map of a small, rocky ‘super Earth’ to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava, with a molten ‘hot’ side and solid ‘cool’ side.
*
Conditions on the hot side of the planet *55 Cancri e* are so extreme that it may have caused the atmosphere to evaporate, with the result that conditions on the two sides of the planet vary widely: *temperatures on the hot side can reach 2500°C, while temperatures on the cool side are around 1100°C*.










55 Cancri e is a ‘super Earth’: a rocky exoplanet about twice the size and eight times the mass of Earth, and orbits its parent star so closely that a year lasts just 18 hours. 55 Cancri e has been extensively studied since it was discovered in 2011. _Based on readings taken at different points in time, it was thought to be a water world, or even made of diamond, but researchers now believe that it is almost *completely covered by lava*_.


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## Drone (Apr 1, 2016)

Exoplanets, planetesimals, hot-Jupiters, protoplanetary disks and more .. 
























Interesting idea: [Laser cloaking device could help us hide from aliens]

Two astronomers at Columbia University in New York suggest *humanity could use lasers to conceal the Earth from searches by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations*. According to the authors, *emitting a continuous 30 MW laser for about 10 hours, once a year, would be enough to eliminate the transit signal, at least in visible light*.

More exciting news:

Triple star system was found in 2005 and here's a new one:

*Planet with triple-star system found*





A Jupiter-sized planet hovers in the sky beside a triple star system, as seen from a hypothetical moon nearby (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

*KELT-4Ab*, a gas giant planet, similar in size to Jupiter - takes ~ 3 days to make its way around the star KELT-A, which serves as its sun. The other two stars, named KELT-B and C, are much farther away and orbit one another over the course of _~ 30 years_. It takes the pair _~ 4000 years_ to orbit KELT-A. The view from KELT-4Ab would likely be one where its sun, KELT-A, would appear ~ _40 times as big as our sun does to us_ due to its close proximity. The two other orbiting stars, on the other hand, would appear much dimmer due to their great distance, shining no brighter than our moon.


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## Drone (Apr 3, 2016)

Carl Sagan on Extraterrestrials


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## Drone (Apr 8, 2016)

Young, unattached Jupiter analog found in solar neighborhood










And this is how NASA looks for rogue planets:


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## Drone (Apr 12, 2016)

*Stephen Hawking and billionaire team up to find aliens*










*The planet hunter, MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager, searching for another Earth*










*superhot alien planet has 'sunscreening' stratosphere*

*WASP-33b*, an exoplanet _4.5 times more massive that Jupiter_, has a layer in its atmosphere that absorbs ultraviolet radiation, preventing UV from reaching the surface. Earth has a similar stratospheric UV filter










Exoplanet Kepler-453b is the 10th planet found by NASA's Kepler Mission to have a pair of host stars which indicates that many more could exist but remain hidden.


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## Drone (Apr 20, 2016)

Amazing video by National Science Foundation










Scientists found a rogue exoplanet, called WISEA J114724.10-204021.3


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## Drone (Apr 25, 2016)

New videos by NASA 360.

Unfortunately music is so fucking loud and annoying, luckily the full cast is in the description


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## Drone (May 2, 2016)

Astronomers have discovered three planets orbiting a faint red ultracool dwarf star just 40 ly from us. *These worlds have sizes and temperatures similar to those of Venus and Earth *and are the best targets found so far for the search for life outside the Solar System. They are *the first planets ever discovered around such a tiny and dim star*.






TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool dwarf star - it's much cooler and redder than the Sun and barely larger than Jupiter. This star has ~ 0.05% of the Sun's luminosity and a mass of about 8% that of the Sun. It lies in the constellation of Aquarius. Detailed analysis showed that three Earth-sized planets were orbiting TRAPPIST-1.






Two of the planets have orbital periods of ~ 1.5 and 2.4 days respectively, and the third planet has a less well determined period.

With such short orbital periods, the planets are between 20 and 100 times closer to their star than the Earth to the Sun. The structure of this planetary system is much more similar in scale to the system of Jovian moons than to that of the Solar System.

Although they orbit very close to their host dwarf star, the inner two planets only receive 4 and 2 times, respectively, the amount of radiation received by the Earth, because their star is much fainter than the Sun. That puts them closer to the star than the habitable zone for this system, although it's still possible that they possess habitable regions on their surfaces. The third, outer, planet's orbit is not yet well known, but it probably receives less radiation than the Earth does, but maybe still enough to lie within the habitable zone.


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## Drone (May 10, 2016)

Kepler Mission Has Identified 1284 New Exoplanets










An additional 1327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99% threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates previously verified by other techniques.

In the newly-validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth, based on their size. 9 of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone. 21 exoplanets now are known to be members of this exclusive group.


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## Drone (May 11, 2016)

Duh, back in 2015 _KIC 8462852_ got so much attention, alien megastructure and blablabla










_New Study Supports Natural Causes to Explain Behavior of KIC 8462852
_
KIC 8462852 (aka TYC 3162-665-1) is a main-sequence F-type star located in the constellation Cygnus, ~ 1480 ly away.

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope had monitored this star for several years, observing unusual incidents in 2011 and 2013, when the star's light dimmed in never-before-seen ways.

The star had deep dips in brightness – up to 22%, indicating that a large number of objects had passed across the star’s disk and temporarily blocked some of the light coming from it.

In October 2015, a team of astronomers at Pennsylvania State University released a preprint paper that cited KIC 8462852's light curve as 'consistent with' a swarm of alien megastructures.

The attention caused astronomers at the SETI Institute to train their Alien Telescope Array on KIC 8462852 to see if they could detect any radio signals indicating the presence of an alien civilization. In November 2015 the team reported finding 'no evidence' of signals with an artificial origin.

Then a study released in January 2016 by Dr. Bradley Schaefer from Louisiana State University threw even more fuel on the fire of alien speculation by announcing that the brightness of KIC 8462852 had dimmed by 20% over the last century.

However, the new study, led by German astronomer Michael Hippke, has taken a detailed look at the observations on which the study by Dr. Schaefer was based and concluded there is no credible evidence that the brightness of the star been steadily changing over this period.

“We looked at variations in the brightness of a number of comparable stars in the Digital Access to a Sky Century at Harvard (DASCH) database and found that many of them experienced a similar drop in intensity in the 1960’s,” said co-author Prof. Keivan Stassun of Vanderbilt University.

“That indicates the drops were caused by changes in the instrumentation not by changes in the stars' brightness.”

“Even if aliens are not involved, KIC 8462852 remains the most mysterious star in the Universe,” said Dr. Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University, who was not involved in the current study.

“It would take an object 1000 times the area of the Earth transiting the distant star to produce such a dramatic effect.”

The team considered a number of possible explanations, including variations in the KIC 8462852's output, the aftermath of an Earth/Moon type planetary collision, interstellar clumps of dust passing between the star and Earth, and some kind of disruption by the star's apparent dwarf companion. However, none of their scenarios could explain all of the observations.

Their best explanation was a giant comet that fragmented into a cascade of thousands of smaller comets.

“What does this mean for the mystery? Are there no aliens after all? Probably not! _Still, the dips found by Kepler are real. Something seems to be transiting in front of this star and we still have no idea what it is,_” Hippke said.


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## Drone (May 11, 2016)

Kepler-223: Astronomers Find System with 4 Giant Planets Trapped in Resonance

Kepler-223 is a star very similar in size and mass to the Sun but much older (> 6 billion years old).

The planets of Kepler-223 system - Kepler-223 b, c, d, e - are so-called sub-Neptunes – they are much larger than Earth, likely consisting of a solid core and an envelope of gas, and they orbit their star in periods ranging from only 7 to 19 days.

Kepler-223 b and c – the system's two innermost planets – are in a 4:3 resonance. Kepler-223 c and d are in a 3:2 resonance. And Kepler-223 d and e are in a 4:3 resonance.

Astronomers think that two planets migrate through the gaseous disk, get stuck and then keep migrating together; find a third planet, get stuck, migrate together; find a fourth planet and get stuck.

That process differs completely from the one that astronomers believe led to the formation of Earth, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, which likely formed in their current orbital locations.

Earth formed from Mars- or Moon-sized bodies smacking together, a violent and chaotic process. When planets form this way their final orbital periods are not near a resonance.

But scientists suspect that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune moved around substantially during their formation. They may have been knocked out of resonances that once resembled those of Kepler-223, possibly after interacting with numerous asteroids and small planets.








Planets are in resonance when, for example, every time one of them orbits its sun once, the next one goes around twice. Jupiter's moons, where the phenomenon was discovered, display resonance.


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## Drone (May 13, 2016)

5 Planets Where The Weather Will Straight-Up Kill You


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## Drone (May 18, 2016)

Astronomers using ALMA have made the first high-resolution image of the cometary belt around *HR 8799*, the only star where multiple planets have been imaged directly. _The shape of this dusty disk, particularly its inner edge, is surprisingly inconsistent with the orbits of the planets, suggesting that either they changed position over time or there is at least one more planet in the system yet to be discovered._

The disk, which fills a region 150-420 AU, is produced by the _ongoing collisions of cometary bodies in the outer reaches of this star system_. ALMA was able to image the emission from mm-size debris in the disk; according to the researchers, the small size of these dust grains suggests that the planets in the system are larger than Jupiter.





HR 8799 is a young star ~ 1.5 times the mass of the Sun located 129 ly from Earth in the direction of the constellation Pegasus.


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## Drone (May 27, 2016)

A robotic survey of the southern sky has discovered its first exoplanet: KELT-10b, a highly inflated giant planet. Although it's only 2/3 the mass of Jupiter, KELT-10b is 40% larger than Jupiter in radius. Because of its large size, when the planet passes in front of its star, it blocks out a whopping 1.4% of the star's light, generating a transit signal that is relatively easy to detect.






Lightcurve of exoplanet KELT-10b is overlaid on an image of the KELT-S Telescope in South Africa.



********************

U.S. astronomers announced the discovery of a giant planet in close orbit around a star so young that it still retains a disk of circumstellar gas and dust.

CI Tau b is at least 8 times larger than Jupiter and orbits a 2 million-year-old star about 450 ly from Earth in the constellation Taurus.
CI Tau b orbits the star CI Tau once every 9 days.






This result is unique because it demonstrates that a giant planet can form so rapidly that the remnant gas and dust from which the young star formed, surrounding the system in a Frisbee-like disk, is still present. Giant planet formation in the inner part of this disk, where CI Tau b is located, will have a profound impact on the region where smaller terrestrial planets are also potentially forming.

******************

Using the Gemini Planet Imager astronomers have successfully monitored the _motion of a planet around the forming exoplanet system_ orbiting the star HD 95086 and suggest that _more unseen planets are present._







*************


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## Drone (Jun 8, 2016)

10 Most Intriguing Exoplanets










*******************************************

10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life










*******************************************


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## Drone (Jun 9, 2016)

Scientists working at the Stellar Astrophysics Centre have discovered a new giant exoplanet *K2-39b*

K2-39b orbits extremely close to its host star [at a distance of only 1.7 times the diameter of the star]. By comparison, Earth is > 100 solar diameters away from the Sun. On the other hand, the subgiant star hosting the planet is ~ 4 times larger than the Sun.







Vincent Van Eylen, who led the study says: 
_
"Previously, we thought perhaps such planets would_ _quickly be destroyed due to tidal interactions once the host star_ _evolves. 
K2-39b hasn't been destroyed, or at least not yet, so either_ _the tidal destruction is not as efficient as we may have thought or_ _feared, or the planet may be destroyed in the next few thousand years._ _But if that's the case, it would be an extreme coincidence that we found_ _it in the first place, and the effects of tidal decay should become_ _visible within the next few years."_

Further studies of planets orbiting evolved stars will help understand the fate of planets as their host stars grow older. The same will happen to the solar system in a few billion years, when Sun will evolve into a giant star.


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## Drone (Jun 10, 2016)

Likely new giant planet PTFO8-8695 b is believed to orbit a star in the constellation Orion every 11 hours. Gravity from the newborn star appears to be pulling away the outer layers of the Jupiter-like planet.


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## Drone (Jun 11, 2016)

Was surfing through youtube and found pretty interesting videos:


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## Drone (Jun 13, 2016)

Another day another exoplanet!






New exoplanet named CVSO 30c [the small dot to the upper left of the frame, the large blob is the star itself]. While the previously-detected planet, CVSO 30b, orbits very close to the star, whirling around CVSO 30 in just under 11 hours at an orbital distance of 0.008 AU, CVSO 30c orbits significantly further out, at a distance of 660 AU, taking a staggering 27 000 years to complete a single orbit. (For reference, the planet Mercury orbits the Sun at an average distance of 0.39 AU, while Neptune sits at just over 30 AU.)

If it is confirmed that CVSO 30c orbits CVSO 30, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet detected by the transit method and a far-out exoplanet detected by direct imaging. Astronomers are still exploring how such an exotic system came to form in such a short timeframe, as the star is only 2.5 million years old; it is possible that the two planets interacted at some point in the past, scattering off one another and settling in their current extreme orbits.


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## Drone (Jun 20, 2016)

Newborn Exoplanet Discovered Around Young Star

The planet, K2-33b, at 5-10 million years old, is still in its infancy. It is ~ 6 times the size of Earth (~50% than Neptune) and makes a complete orbit around its host star in ~ 5 days. This implies that it is 20 times closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun.











Pretty informative video by Glyn Collinson from NASA's Goddard spaceflight center. He explains how "electric wind" can strip Earth-like planets of oceans and atmospheres.


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## Drone (Jul 4, 2016)

Qatari astronomers discover 3 'hot Jupiters'










Qatar-3b, Qatar-5b are of a similar size, at 4.31 and 4.32 Jupiter masses, while Qatar-4b ~ 5.85 times the mass of Jupiter.

They are all bigger than Jupiter (12-17 times larger than Earth). Qatar-4b is the largest, at 1.55 times Jupiter's radius.

They also have temperatures between 1400-1700°C and the distances to the new planets are 1400-1800 ly away.


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## Drone (Jul 5, 2016)

*Exoplanet Kepler-10b is believed to experience up to a trillion lightning strikes per hour*.










*Exoplanet HD131399Ab has three suns*


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## Drone (Jul 31, 2016)

*There is an 85% probability that there is an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri A or B*.

Learn more about Mission Centaur

Earth Proxima


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## Drone (Aug 9, 2016)

Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute, shares what inspires her scientific curiosity. Kaltenegger's research focuses on the characterization of habitable worlds.











**************

We've been paying attention to the star that scientists think could have the capability of supporting advanced life for a while, and things are getting even more interesting now.











*************

Really awesome and informative top 5. I wonder how I missed that video.


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## Drone (Aug 22, 2016)

Not exactly new but really interesting videos where scientists Sara Seager & Lisa Kaltenegger explain how they search for exoplanets and their atmospheres.




























This is just for fun:

Fun Facts About Photosynthesis










And this one is unrelated but really interesting nonetheless

The Loneliest Place in the Universe


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## Drone (Aug 24, 2016)

Earth-like planet found orbiting habitable zone of nearest star


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## Drone (Aug 29, 2016)

Ok, I was complaining that there are no discoveries. Here comes trouble. Aliens On-line! Kinda ... or maybe it's just a microlensing.


Is Earth being contacted by ALIENS? Mystery radio signals coming from a sun-like star baffle scientists

What we know of HD 164595 is that it's a star of 0.99 solar masses at a distance of roughly 95 ly in the constellation Hercules, and an estimated age of 6.3 billion years. Its metallicity is almost identical to that of the Sun. A known planet in this system, HD 164595 b, is 0.05 Jupiter mass with a period of 40 days, considered to be a warm Neptune on a circular orbit. There could, of course, be other planets still undetected in this system.

http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/a-seti-signal


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## Drone (Sep 1, 2016)

A team of Carnegie scientists has discovered a highly unusual system.






Star HD 133131A hosts 2 moderately eccentric planets, one of which is, at a minimum, ~ 1.5 times Jupiter's mass and the other of which is, at a minimum, just >0.5 Jupiter's mass. Star HD 133131B hosts one moderately eccentric planet with a mass at least 2.5 times Jupiter's.

The two stars themselves are separated by only 360 AU. The system represents the smallest-separation binary in which both stars host planets that has ever been observed.

The system is even more unusual because both stars are 'metal poor'.

Adding to the intrigue, scientists used very precise analysis to reveal that the stars are not actually identical 'twins' as previously thought, but have slightly different chemical compositions, making them more like the stellar equivalent of fraternal twins.

This could indicate that one star swallowed some baby planets early in its life, changing its composition slightly. Alternatively, the gravitational forces of the detected giant planets that remained may have had a strong effect on fully-formed small planets, flinging them in towards the star or out into space.


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## Drone (Sep 13, 2016)

In 2015, astronomers reported unusual behavior in the star KIC 8462852 that they could not explain. Now, another team has discovered a second star that behaves similarly to KIC 8462852. It's called *EPIC 204278916* and it's even stranger than the first one.

This young, dusty, disk-bearing star reminds us 'Alien Megastructures' aren't the only answer.

Authors offer two potential explanations for the big flux dips that they see that's also consistent with everything else observed:

_a warped inner disk transiting circumstellar clumps in circular orbits_
_cometary-like debris in an eccentric orbit_









Other related video:


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## Drone (Sep 14, 2016)

*The discovery of three Earth-sized planets likely orbiting a low-mass star is looking like the real thing
*


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## Drone (Sep 15, 2016)

ALMA image of the disk around the young (10 million years old) star *TW Hydrae*. Several *gaps* are clearly depicted. Researchers found that the size of the dust particles in the inner 22 AU gap is smaller than the other bright regions and guess that *a planet similar to Neptune is located in this gap*.

Why are smaller dust particles selectively located in the gap in the disk? Theoretical studies have predicted that gravitational interaction and friction between gas and dust particles push the larger dust out from the gap, while the smaller particles remain in the gap.


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## Drone (Sep 21, 2016)




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## Drone (Sep 22, 2016)

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and a trick of nature, have confirmed the existence of a *planet orbiting two stars* in the system *OGLE-2007-BLG-349*, located 8000 ly away towards the center of our galaxy. The Hubble observations represent the first time such a three-body system has been confirmed using the gravitational microlensing technique.

Video by Wiggle Puppy Productions:










and Buzz60










Some old-stuff

In 2005-2006 scientists discovered exoplanet *OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb* using the 'microlensing' technique. OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb orbits a red star five times less massive than the Sun and located at a distance of ~ 25000 ly, not far from the center of our Milky Way galaxy.


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## Drone (Oct 18, 2016)

New really interesting discoveries about the young Sun-like star J1407 & brown dwarf J1407b with giant rings around it and TW Hydrae


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## Drone (Oct 22, 2016)




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## Drone (Oct 26, 2016)

Remember F-type star *KIC 8462852* (aka Tabby's star)?  (see this post or this one)










Good news: astronomers are gonna observe it!

*Beginning tonight (October 26, 2016), UC Berkeley's Breakthrough Listen project is devoting hours of time on the Green Bank radio telescope to see if it can detect any signals from intelligent extraterrestrials*

Breakthrough Listen was created last year with $100 million in funding over 10 years from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founder, internet investor Yuri Milner. The observations are scheduled for 8 hours per night for 3 nights over the next two months. Observations will gather ~ 1 petabyte of data over hundreds of millions of individual radio channels.


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## Drone (Nov 28, 2016)

Potentially Habitable Exoplanet *K2-3d*







K2-3d's size is 1.5 times the size of Earth. The planet orbits its host star, which is half the size of the Sun, with a period of ~ 45 days. Compared to Earth, the planet orbits close to its host star (~ 0.2 AU). But, because the temperature of the host star is lower than that of the Sun, calculations show that this is the right distance for the planet to have a relatively warm climate like Earth's. There is a possibility that liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet, raising the tantalizing possibility of *extraterrestrial life*.


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## Drone (Feb 13, 2017)

Astronomers have discovered 60 new planets beyond our Solar System.

The international team, which includes Dr Mikko Tuomi from the University of Hertfordshire, found the new extrasolar planets orbiting stars close to Earth’s solar system.

The scientists also found evidence of a further 54 planets, bringing the potential discovery of new worlds to 114.

The team said the planets are in our “immediate solar system” and one in particular, Gliese 411b, is of particular interest.


Read here


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2017)

Ultracool Dwarf and the Seven Planets

Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 ly away.


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2017)

More TRAPPIST-1 videos from NASA


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2017)

moar


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## Drone (Mar 31, 2017)




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## Drone (Apr 2, 2017)

Exoplanet fun w/ NdGT 



















Lol this one is priceless!


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## Drone (Apr 7, 2017)

An Earth-sized planet orbiting a dim star 39 ly away has a *hazy atmosphere* that could indicate the presence of a "*water world*", say scientists.

It's one of the first times astronomers have been able to detect an atmosphere surrounding a small rocky planet.

Source: Belfast Telegraph


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## Drone (Apr 13, 2017)




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## Drone (Apr 20, 2017)

Potentially Habitable Super-Earth is a Prime Target for Atmospheric Study


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## Drone (Apr 26, 2017)

New ice-ball planet!


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## Drone (Apr 30, 2017)




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## Drone (May 10, 2017)

New videos!


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## Drone (May 11, 2017)




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## Drone (May 22, 2017)

Astronomers Confirm Orbital Details of TRAPPIST-1h

(the orbital period of TRAPPIST-1h is 19 days)

At 6 million miles from its cool dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1h is located beyond the outer edge of the habitable zone, and is likely too cold for life as we know it. The amount of energy (per unit area) planet h receives from its star is comparable to what the dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, gets from our sun.










'alien megastructure' KIC 8462852 star is acting weird again











A growing human-made bubble in space could be great news for our future on this planet


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## Drone (Jun 7, 2017)

Latest stuff:


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## Drone (Jun 26, 2017)

*Anonymous*: NASA Is About to Announce the Discovery of Intelligent Alien Life










I dunno what to say but this video is really interesting to say the least. Some stuff is worthy of attention.


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## Drone (Nov 15, 2017)




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## Drone (Dec 4, 2017)

Join astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger, who is the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University, as she explains the different methods astronomers use to detect exoplanets orbiting distant stars, what these planets would need to support life, and how Earth and its range of species might serve as a Rosetta Stone—a key to detecting the existence of extraterrestrial life.


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## P4-630 (Dec 15, 2017)

"_Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The newly-discovered Kepler-90i -- a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days -- was found by researchers from Google and The University of Texas at Austin using machine learning. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers “learn.” In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets._"

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/...-discover-eighth-planet-circling-distant-star


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## Drone (Dec 28, 2017)




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## Drone (Feb 5, 2018)

Latest news!


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## Drone (Feb 17, 2018)

old vid (July 2015!) but I missed it










new videos:


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## Drone (Feb 19, 2018)

Astronomers Identify 95 new Exoplanets


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## Drone (May 7, 2018)




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## Drone (Oct 8, 2018)

New videos


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## Drone (Feb 22, 2019)




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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

These are exo*moons*, not exoplanets.
The orbital periods are much too short to allow otherwise.
Planets whipping around a star in 5 days??!?!
Pshaw.

Likely you are seeing a very faint star (like Jupiter) with it's many moons.
Scale can be hard to discern, to say the least!


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## dorsetknob (Mar 18, 2019)

Exomoons orbit exoplanets ( which orbit Stars )


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

dorsetknob said:


> Exomoons orbit exoplanets ( which orbit Stars )



Is there a well-known example of an exo-_anything _with orbital periods on order of those seen in our solar system?
In other words, I understand what you are saying... I am suggesting what you take to be a star (yes, true) is on the order of the size of Jupiter, say, with it's many moons as we all know...

That's not a planet, baby.... THAT'S A MOON! Exo*moon*.
Sidebar: "That's no moon!  It's a space station!" -- some dork

I would also add our best telescopes can only peer about 350 "light-years" into the cosmos.
So there is absolutely no basis for calling something 1,500,000 light-years away or whatever.  Absurd.


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## Komshija (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> These are exo*moons*, not exoplanets.
> The orbital periods are much too short to allow otherwise.
> Planets whipping around a star in 5 days??!?!
> Pshaw.
> ...



There is one hot gas giant, if I remember correctly, which orbits around its parent star every 4 days. I've searched for it - it's 51 Pegasi b. There are probably more examples of such planets with extremely short orbital period.


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

Komshija said:


> There is one hot gas giant, if I remember correctly, which orbits around its parent star every 4 days. I've searched for it - it's 51 Pegasi b. There are probably more examples of such planets with extremely short orbital period.



Not planets.  *Moons*.  A planet orbiting a star in 4 days?  Come on, man.
Even Mercury, our closest-in planet, requires 88 days to complete a revolution around Sol.

Now where might we see orbital periods measured in _days_?

Well, here's some (moons of Jupiter):

Satellite -- Orbital Period (Earth Days)
Io -- 1.769 days
Europa -- 3.551 days
Ganymede -- 7.155 days
Callisto -- 16.689 days

hmmm... pretty close to Europa, one of the many *moons *of Jupiter

BTW, Jupiter is a hot gas gaint


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## Ahhzz (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> Not planets.  *Moons*.  A planet orbiting a star in 4 days?  Come on, man.
> Even Mercury, our closest-in planet, requires 88 days to complete a revolution around Sol.
> 
> Now where might we see orbital periods measured in _days_?
> .......



Technically speaking, Komshija and Drone are correct. 


Spoiler



*51 Pegasi b* (abbreviated *51 Peg b*), unofficially dubbed *Bellerophon*, later named *Dimidium*, is an extrasolar planet approximately 50 light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. It was the first exoplanet to be discovered orbiting a main-sequence star,[1] the Sun-like 51 Pegasi, and marked a breakthrough in astronomical research. It is the prototype for a class of planets called hot Jupiters.


According to the link, it's an Extrasolar Planet, and an exoplanet.


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

Ahhzz said:


> Technically speaking, Komshija and Drone are correct.
> 
> 
> Spoiler
> ...



That would make the base system a binary pair as a "hot Jupiter" is a star, not a planet.
The 4 day orbital period is a dead give away in that case as a planet orbiting a star at that rate you would think would be ripped apart.
Show me another planet with a 4-day orbital period around a star, please, or anywhere in that ballpark.
We can, rather, as I have pointed out above, find moons with orbital periods measured in days.
I think the confusion lies in calling Jupiter a planet.  It's more like a star.


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## infrared (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> That would make the base system a binary pair as a "hot Jupiter" is a star, not a planet.
> The 4 day orbital period is a dead give away in that case as a planet orbiting a star at that rate you would think would be ripped apart.
> Show me another planet with a 4-day orbital period around a star, please, or anywhere in that ballpark.
> We can, rather, as I have pointed out above, find moons with orbital periods measured in days.
> I think the confusion lies in calling Jupiter a planet.  It's more like a star.


Where did you read it orbits in 4 days?? More like 12 years!


Spoiler


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

infrared said:


> Where did you read it orbits in 4 days?? More like 12 years!
> 
> View attachment 118957



Correct.
I added that Europa, a moon of Jupiter, has an orbital period of about 4 days.



FCG said:


> Satellite -- Orbital Period (Earth Days)
> Io -- 1.769 days
> Europa -- 3.551 days
> Ganymede -- 7.155 days
> Callisto -- 16.689 days


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## infrared (Mar 18, 2019)

Ah, thought you were on about Jupiter itself, I need to read more carefully. Still not sure how you decided it's a star, you're good at thinking outside the box that's for sure.


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## Drone (Mar 18, 2019)

On topic:

According to wiki

An exoplanet orbiting red dwarf star TYC 9486-927-1 has the *longest *known* orbital period* (~1000000 years). Holy sh... 1 million years. Oh my … And it's >4500 AU from its star.

Exoplanet with shortest known orbital period is around SWIFT J1756.9-2508 pulsar. (4.31 hours)


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 18, 2019)

@FCG
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/star
See definition 1a & 1b
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/planet
See definition 1a(1) and 1a(2)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moon
See definition 1c



FCG said:


> Correct.
> I added that Europa, a moon of Jupiter


Wait a moment, you said earlier;


FCG said:


> Likely you are seeing a very faint star (like Jupiter)


So if Jupiter is a star, very faint or otherwise, it doesn't have moons. By your logic, Europe would be a planet.

So which is it? Is Jupiter a planet or a star?

Allow me help you out with that. A star is any mass object that is or has at some point in the past had a process of fusion going on in it's core. Jupiter is not a star as it has never nor will it ever have fusion reactions taking place. Jupiter is a planet and it's satellites are moons.

Exoplanets are satellites of stars. Exomoons are satellites of exoplanets. See how that works? Simple logic that gives order and understanding to those parts of the universe. You really need to stop with the transparent & blatant shoveling of disinformation. You're embarrassing yourself and causing needless nonsense here on TPU.


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

infrared said:


> Ah, thought you were on about Jupiter itself, I need to read more carefully. Still not sure how you decided it's a star, you're good at thinking outside the box that's for sure.



The outer "planets" being Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune are all very star-like.
They are separate and distinct from the inner rocky planets being Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars.
Separating these two sets of 4 planets each is what we call the Main Asteroid belt as this is where a majority of asteroids hang out.
There are asteriods further out, remnants of the many supernova that have occurred already in this solar system, distributed in a 3D sphere about the solar system that we call the Oort cloud (see attached).
Look, they even included Ceres in this mock-up.

At the center of each planet is a portion of a white dwarf core which was destroyed when the spacial (we'll call it Substance A) star went supernova and fractured and destroyed the nearby temporal (Substance B) white dwarf star included in that binary pair.

The outer planets (across the asteroid boundary) are lighter gases and are gravitating and condensing more fuel as they move their way up the main sequence.  Uranus and Neptune, already blue in color, and near the end of their lives and will supernova again relatively soon.  Much of the heavier elements closer to the center of the supernova accumulated on the white dwarf core fragments that are the 4 inner planets much more.

Every planet is a star at the core.  So are moons.  White dwarf (Substance B star) cores being what would be described as an inside-out Substance A star.  White dwarf stars have their lightest elements increasingly found going inward towards the center with the heavier elements gravitating to the surface.

P.S. I agree, Pluto is not a planet and is more akin to an asteroid.

Potato, tomato...







lexluthermiester said:


> Allow me help you out with that. A star is any mass object that is or has at some point in the past had a process of fusion going on in it's core.



Stars don't fusion, they fission.



lexluthermiester said:


> Exoplanets are satellites of stars. Exomoons are satellites of exoplanets. See how that works?



Oh, I get it.  Depends on what you want to call a planet.
Planets at one point were referred to as wandering stars.


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> Stars don't fusion, they fission.


Oh?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fusion
See definition 3
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fission
See definition 1 and 3

Stars fuse atoms into heavier atoms.

Nuclear weapons and radioactive decay break apart large atoms into smaller atoms.

A thought has occurred. It is entirely possible that you do not understand the depth of your own ignorance. This has suddenly become very fascinating!


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

Drone said:


> On topic:
> 
> According to wiki
> 
> ...



Someone been watching this thing for awhile then, huh?
How far away was this star and exoplanet exactly?
What would be the degree of arc subtended during the period of this observation, within the measurable degree of certainty, to allow for such a preposterous calculation?  Help me out.

Planet around a star in 4 hours?  Whoa... wild ride.  Literally... hang on.

What's your next trick, star spinning at 1,475,756 RPM?



lexluthermiester said:


> Oh?
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fusion
> See definition 3
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fission
> ...



Indeed.
I've been known to dabble in nuclear engineering.


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> I've been known to dabble in nuclear engineering.


Doubtful or you would have known the difference. Rookie mistake..

Those two processes are very different and are indeed completely opposite.


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

lexluthermiester said:


> Doubtful or you would have known the difference. Rookie mistake..
> 
> Those two processes are very different and are indeed completely opposite.



The same environment which would allow for fusion to take place also allows for fission to take place.

The problem begins in defining the atom.
The atom is a 3D temporal rotation in time at a location in space.
It is a compound motion which can be modeled using a dual rotating system of quaternions.
It is not made of up constituent protons and neutrons and electrons all just hanging out with each other for the heck of it.

Just because you can using EM accelerate particles to fantastical speeds approaching the speed of light (really you are lessening the "drag" of gravity and allowing the particle to achieve "default speed of the progression" (c, or the "speed of light) and smash them together and watch all the fragments come out does it mean those fragments go back together like humpty-dumpty.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> What's your next trick, star spinning at 1,475,756 RPM?



Sry for short off-topic, but:

https://www.nrao.edu/pr/2006/mspulsar/

Not quite a million RPM, but 42960 RPM.



FCG said:


> The same environment which would allow for fusion to take place also allows for fission to take place.



The environment for both fusion and fission taking place has equal properties, but both processes have very different requirements and outcomes and thus should not be confused.


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 18, 2019)

FCG said:


> The atom is a 3D temporal rotation in time.


A statement as redundant as it is disproven.


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

Dinnercore said:


> The environment for both fusion and fission taking place has equal properties, but both processes have very different requirements and thus should not be confused.



Yeah, here's a different property: fission has been demonstrated self-sustaining... fusion, not so much.

Here's a good summary of the State of the Art, straight from Wiky-P!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition

"Experts believe that achieving fusion ignition is the first step towards the potentially limitless energy source that is nuclear fusion."

Translation: Not yet! But we're really trying!


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## Drone (Mar 18, 2019)

Dinnercore said:


> Sry for short off-topic, but:
> 
> https://www.nrao.edu/pr/2006/mspulsar/
> Not quite a million RPM, but 42960 RPM.




PSR J1748-2446ad is a monster indeed.

Black hole ASASSN14-li is spinning at least half as fast as the speed of light. I don't even know how much rpms is that lol


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## FCG (Mar 18, 2019)

Dinnercore said:


> Not quite a million RPM, but 42960 RPM.



That was my point.  Also preposterous.


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## Dinnercore (Mar 18, 2019)

Drone said:


> PSR J1748-2446ad is a monster indeed.
> 
> Black hole ASASSN14-li is spinning at least half as fast as the speed of light. I don't even know how much rpms is that lol



That would depend on the diameter of it. Going backwards to % of speed of light for our spinning neutron star:

20 mile diameter = ~ 32000m 
32000m * pi = circumference (~100530m)
at 716x per second = ~71980170 m/s on the surface of the equator

That should be just over 24% of the speed of light. I hope I didnt mess up anywhere, its late.


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## Drone (Jun 19, 2019)

An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has discovered two new Earth-like planets near one of our closest neighboring stars. "Teegarden’s star" is only about 12.5 light years away from Earth and is one of the smallest known stars. It is only about 2700 °C warm and about ten times lighter than the Sun. Although it is so close to us, the star wasn’t discovered until 2003. The scientists observed the star for about three years.






						Information for the Media - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
					

Webseiten der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen




					www.uni-goettingen.de
				





I can't hide my excitement, this is so cool!


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 19, 2019)

Drone said:


> An international research team led by the University of Göttingen has discovered two new Earth-like planets near one of our closest neighboring stars. "Teegarden’s star" is only about 12.5 light years away from Earth and is one of the smallest known stars. It is only about 2700 °C warm and about ten times lighter than the Sun. Although it is so close to us, the star wasn’t discovered until 2003. The scientists observed the star for about three years.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Very exciting indeed! This might be the best candidate for life outside our solar system to date. Both are inside the habitable zone for the star, and depending on the star's characteristics, the strength of each planets magnetic field and whether or not the planets are tidally locked, conditions might be very favorable for earth-like(carbon/water based) life.


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## Drone (Jul 27, 2019)

WOW


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## Drone (Aug 22, 2019)




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## Eskimonster (Aug 27, 2019)

News Alert
Study shows some exoplanets may have greater variety of life than exists on Earth 



			https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-08/gc-sss082119.php


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## Drone (Feb 18, 2020)




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## Drone (Mar 6, 2020)

New research suggests *K2-18b*, a "mini-Neptune" that lies roughly 125 light-years from Earth, could be potentially habitable.


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## Drone (Apr 15, 2020)

So exciting! Could've been Earth 2.0


















						Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data
					

While the star it orbits is much smaller than our Sun, it gets about 75% of the sunlight Earth does. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed Kepler mission development.




					www.jpl.nasa.gov


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## Drone (Apr 28, 2020)

The U.S. Navy has officially published three UFO videos that were previously published by the New York Times and former blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge’s UFO research group, To the Stars Academy. Together, they are three of the most famous UFO videos of all time and have spurred a renaissance in UFOlogy.









						US Navy Officially Publishes Three UFO Videos
					

The three videos were originally released by former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge.




					www.vice.com


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## Drone (Apr 30, 2020)

The weather forecast for the giant, super-hot Jupiter WASP-79b is steamy humidity, scattered clouds, iron rain, and yellow skies. This exoplanet orbits a star that is hotter and brighter than our Sun, and is located at a distance of 780 ly from Earth in the constellation Eridanus.

The surprise in recently published results, is that the *planet's sky doesn't have any evidence for an atmospheric phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering*, where certain colors of light are dispersed by very fine dust particles in the upper atmosphere. Rayleigh scattering is what makes Earth's skies blue by scattering the shorter (bluer) wavelengths of sunlight.

Because WASP-79b doesn't seem to have this phenomenon, the daytime sky would likely be *yellowish*, researchers say.









						No Blue Skies for Super-Hot Planet WASP-79b
					






					hubblesite.org


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## kapone32 (Apr 30, 2020)

Drone said:


> New research suggests *K2-18b*, a "mini-Neptune" that lies roughly 125 light-years from Earth, could be potentially habitable.



Can you imagine what the gravity would be on a world that large. I would not want to caught in a Huuricane. It actually brought that scene in Interstellar.


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## Drone (Jul 2, 2020)

Core of a gas planet seen for the first time









						Core of a gas planet seen for the first time
					

Astronomers have found a previously unseen type of object circling a distant star.



					www.bbc.com
				












						Hard and inhospitable chunk of interstellar rock gives clue to how planets form
					

Astronomers have discovered what they believe is the exposed core of a gas giant locked in a close orbit around a Sun-like star.



					www.abc.net.au
				




thanks @dorsetknob


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## Drone (Sep 8, 2020)

Astronomers find no signs of alien tech after scanning > 10.3 million stars

https://www.cnet.com/news/astronomers-find-no-signs-of-alien-tech-after-scanning-over-10-million-stars/

Manchester experts suggest that < 0.04% of stellar systems have the potential of hosting advanced civilizations with the equivalent or slightly more advanced radio technology than 21st century humans.

https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/manchester-experts-breakthrough-helps-narrow-the-search-for-intelligent-life-in-the-milky-way/


Bummer no aliens… yet lol


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## Drone (Sep 17, 2020)




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## Drone (Oct 3, 2020)

WOW!









						Portrait of an exoplanet
					

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Astronomy and Extraterrestrial Physics has now succeeded in obtaining the first direct confirmation of a previously discovered exoplanet using the method of radial velocity measurement. Using the the GRAVITY instrument at the VLT telescopes...




					www.mpg.de
				




Astronomers reveal *first direct image* of Beta Pictoris c


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## metalfiber (Nov 12, 2020)

Alright, Planet DOOM...









						| EarthSky
					

Exoplanet K2-141b is fiery hot world that circles so close to its star that 1 side of the planet features a deep ocean of molten lava. Meanwhile, the other side is freezing cold.




					earthsky.org


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## Drone (Jan 23, 2021)

New interesting info on WASP-62b & WASP-107b

Astronomers discover first cloudless, Jupiter-like planet – Harvard Gazette

A ‘super-puff’ planet like no other | UdeMNouvelles (umontreal.ca)


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## Drone (May 22, 2021)




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## lexluthermiester (May 22, 2021)

Drone said:


>


I'm in the group that thinks the governments of the world, not just the US government, knows more then they are saying..

Mathematically, it is almost statistically impossible for us to be alone in the universe. That remains true even when we narrow the scope of view down to just our galaxy.


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## Space Lynx (Friday at 9:38 AM)

Does anyone know if the sheer weight of the ice caps on exoplanets and our own planet affect the rotation/wobble/tilt of the planet in question, for this example:  Earth at all?

I was just thinking about it tonight and thought it was an interesting question, because if that weight melts, and gets distributed elsewhere, we may have more to worry about than just rising sea levels...


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Friday at 11:41 AM)

Space Lynx said:


> Yeah, I have heard him talk in a couple of podcasts. There is strong evidence an ice age occurred 12,800 years ago and reset society so to speak, really interesting to think about this kind of stuff.


I don't understand the arguments against it.
Civilization initially hugged coastlines.
YDB submerged ALL those coastlines.

You would have to be a retard to not see that YDB ended the use of that land.

The only question is how quickly the change happened, with time for people to move, or not.

But people were not mooching around solo, even as hunter gatherer they would have been in tribes and village's IMHO.

Your not tackling a mastodon or mammoth on your own unless you're Putin.


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## KLiKzg (Friday at 12:05 PM)

Drone said:


> Astronomers find no signs of alien tech after scanning > 10.3 million stars
> 
> https://www.cnet.com/news/astronomers-find-no-signs-of-alien-tech-after-scanning-over-10-million-stars/
> 
> ...


As only K1 civilizations can be observed on a scale to detect them in a that way...so that means only: no K1 detected.

But we are still 0,73 based on energy used in 2021.  



Space Lynx said:


> Does anyone know if the sheer weight of the ice caps on exoplanets and our own planet affect the rotation/wobble/tilt of the planet in question, for this example:  Earth at all?
> 
> I was just thinking about it tonight and thought it was an interesting question, because if that weight melts, and gets distributed elsewhere, we may have more to worry about than just rising sea levels...


Yes it does...NASA has done that simulation (also): https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/30/if-...an-what-would-happen-to-the-planets-rotation/


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## Space Lynx (Friday at 12:16 PM)

KLiKzg said:


> As only K1 civilizations can be observed on a scale to detect them in a that way...so that means only: no K1 detected.
> 
> But we are still 0,73 based on energy used in 2021.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the link mate, much appreciated!


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## KLiKzg (Friday at 12:20 PM)

Massdeth said:


> Yes, the 12,800 or so estimate is about right on. Its the half way point of the normal 25,920 year processional cycle, where you get micro nova bursts from the sun, which we are about to go thru in 2033/34. Depending on if the sun gets a clear shot to hit the earth with ejecti and a energetic blast, it can even tilt the earth sloshing the waters and the earth will right itself again immediately, but more sloshing. Actually, on june 24th 2012 we had a micro nova burst with ejecti that should of hit us, but missed us. If it had there would have been a initial mass extinction and the survivors that made it thru would have surely been dead by dec 2012, which makes you take another look at the Mayan calendar.


No, it was NOT on 24th, but on 23rd Jul 2012. Link: https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/

No, it is not a "micro nova", but it is called "a Solar storm".

No, it would have NOT wiped out life on Earth, nor our civilization...as the similar one struck Earth on 1859 & we call it Carrington event...the fact that I write you this & you are reading it - proves that it is survivable. (but not for electronics)


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## the54thvoid (Friday at 12:51 PM)

Exo planets. That's the topic folks.

Keep it clear of terrestrial fantasy. Thanks.


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## dorsetknob (Friday at 1:24 PM)

Space Lynx said:


> Does anyone know if the sheer weight of the ice caps on exoplanets and our own planet affect the rotation/wobble/tilt of the planet in question, for this example: Earth at all?


If you factor in Plate Tectonictonics ( unknown but probable on some exoplanets ) and Glacier Tectonic Plate bounce then yes an ice cap melt will affect the rotation/wobble/tilt of the planet in question. How much is of course unknown

you can draw some conclusions from the recent Earthquake and * tsunami* that hit _Fukushima_ (moving Japan 2 metre's estimated from its previous Geo-Location. This is known to have changed the spin speed of the Earth Slightly.

Edit Wilki reference









						2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## the54thvoid (Friday at 4:15 PM)

Having deleted another post, I'm going to say one last time: This thread was created for the discussion of *exo-planets*. That specifically means the observance and discovery of planets, often similar to our own (in astronomical terms) that are found beyond our solar system. *It was a thread created to discuss the discovery of new planets.*

If you want to talk about plate tectonics, continental movement, and the rebound of the earth's crust, please do so in a new science thread.

To talk about solar flares, go here.


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