Blog Archive

Are there more Titans than Earths in the Milky Way?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/04/14 11:30 CDT

Might there be many Titan-like planets and moons, with atmospheres and liquid methane rain, rivers, and lakes, across the galaxy? It's an important question if you think that liquid methane environments could support alien life, because it turns out that Titan-like planets might be more common than Earth-like planets.

More on Kepler exoplanet discoveries

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/04 12:17 CST

Here's some links to some good followup stories on Wednesday's Kepler press briefing.

Kepler announcement today: More than a thousand exoplanets including one 6-planet system

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/02/02 12:26 CST

I wasn't able to watch the Kepler press briefing today so I will give you links to some of my favorite blogs for information on today's announcement, which follows a major data release last night as well as the publication of a paper in Nature.

Planet Kepler-10b transiting its host star (artist's depiction)

Grab bag: "Rocky" exoplanet, molten lunar core, Rhea close encounter

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2011/01/10 02:12 CST

The Kepler exoplanet hunting mission has made news today with a report of "its first rocky planet."

Evaporating exoplanet

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2010/01/06 11:50 CST

CoRoT-7b was the first unambiguously rocky planet to be discovered and was quite small, at under five Earth masses. But a press release issued today suggests that its history probably has little to do with Earth's.

Bruce Betts: Kepler discovers its first five exoplanets

Posted by Bruce Betts on 2010/01/04 12:06 CST

Congratulations to NASA's Kepler mission team on their announcement of the discovery of its first five exoplanets (planets around other stars). All five are "hot Jupiters," meaning that they are the sizes of the gas giants in our solar system, but are extremely close to their parent stars.