Tag: Exoplanet

  • Nation & World

    Doomed exoplanet spiraling toward obliteration

    For the first time, astronomers have spotted an exoplanet whose orbit is decaying around an evolved, or older, host star.

    5 minutes
    An artist’s concept of the Kepler-1658b.
  • Nation & World

    Tantalizing transit

    Signs of a planet transiting a star outside of the Milky Way galaxy may have been detected for the first time.

    5 minutes
    Possible location of exoplanet.
  • Nation & World

    Cloudless, Jupiter-like planet discovered

    The first Jupiter-like planet without clouds has been detected by astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Unlike our Jupiter, which takes nearly 12 years to orbit the sun, WASP-62b completes a rotation in just four-and-a-half days.

    2 minutes
    Jupiter-like exoplanet.
  • Nation & World

    The scope of TESS

    Harvard astronomer David Latham explains his role as science program director for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

    6 minutes
    David Latham
  • Nation & World

    Understanding life, here, there, and everywhere

    Harvard’s Origins of Life Initiative has grown along with the rise in interest in how life first arose on Earth and whether it exists on other planets.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Charged air

    For doctoral student Sarah Rugheimer, the study of atmosphere holds deep promise in the search for extrasolar life.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Eight new planets found in Goldilocks Zone

    Astronomers announced Tuesday that they have found eight new planets in the Goldilocks Zone of their stars, orbiting at a distance where liquid water can exist on the planet’s surface. The discoveries double the number of small planets believed to be in the habitable zone of their parent stars.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    The search for other Earths

    Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are drafting the target list for NASA’s next planet-finding telescope, the orbiting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will search the Earth’s galactic neighborhood for planets that might support life.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Stars align at astronomy reunion

    Harvard astronomers past and present gathered in Cambridge Friday (April 5) for the first-ever reunion of the Harvard Astronomy Department.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Astronomically close

    Earth-like planets potentially capable of supporting life may be right in our galactic neighborhood, according to researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the California Institute of Technology.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Good day, moons

    CfA fellow David Kipping is heading a hunt for astronomical bodies at the edge of our ability to detect them: moons circling planets in other solar systems.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Planets, planets everywhere

    The rapid rise in discoveries of planets circling other stars is changing astronomers’ views of the galaxy and the Earth’s place in it, giving impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life, astronomer and Radcliffe Fellow Ray Jayawardhana says.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Alien worlds, just like home

    Harvard astronomers, working as part of NASA’s Kepler mission, have detected the first Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star, a milestone in the hunt for alien worlds that brings scientists one step closer to their ultimate goal of finding a twin Earth.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Alien world is blacker than coal

    Imagine a giant world like Jupiter, but more alien than any planet in our solar system. Instead of displaying gleaming clouds colored white and salmon, this world is darker than the blackest lump of coal. It glows only with a feeble red light like a stove’s electric burner — the result of scorching heat from…

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Light fantastic

    New research shows that aurorae on distant “hot Jupiters” could be 100 to 1,000 times brighter than Earth’s aurorae. “I’d love to get a reservation on a tour to see these aurorae,” said lead author Ofer Cohen, a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Earthly extremes hint to life elsewhere

    Scientists are examining single-celled organisms in extreme environments for clues to what life might look like on the myriad planets being discovered in the universe.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘It is within our grasp’

    Answers to questions about life in the universe is “within our grasp,” astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger said at an Origins of Life Initiative forum.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard probes the final frontier

    Since Harvard received its first telescope in the 1670s, its astronomers have pushed back the frontiers of knowledge about the ever-expanding, planet-rich place that is the universe.

    11 minutes