Articles

Nancy Atkinson

A group of researchers, backed by NASA funding, wants to use solar sails and the Sun's gravity to capture an image of an exoplanet so sharp we can see continents, oceans, and clouds.

Mark Marley

Mark Marley explains what planetary scientists mean when they say the word

Hannah Wakeford

A GREAT QUEST is underway to discover Earthsize worlds in their stars’ habitable zones. Along the way, astronomers have been surprised to learn that the most typical size of planet in our galaxy is one with no counterpart in our own solar system.

Jason Davis

NASA's Kepler space telescope helped us find our place in the cosmos.

Jason Davis

NASA and the National Science Foundation are teaming up to observe exoplanets discovered by Kepler and TESS.

Franck Marchis

One year ago, Franck Marchis wrote an article about the remarkable discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here's an update.

Jason Davis

Early Earth's atmosphere wasn't a place for humans. Yet the planet had microbial life—something we should keep in mind for exoplanets.

Jason Davis

And it's only 11 light-years away.

Jason Rhodes

Starshade is a proposed flower-shaped spacecraft that can create an artificial eclipse, allowing space telescopes to spot planets orbiting distant stars.

Franck Marchis

Scientists have found seven, Earth-size planets orbiting a star just 40 light years away. Three lie in the habitable zone and could have water on their surfaces.

Erika Nesvold

At this year’s Division for Planetary Sciences/European Planetary Science Congress meeting, the Exoplanet Dynamics session was packed full of talks on tightly-packed multi-planet systems and their instabilities.

Franck Marchis

What began as a tantalizing rumor has just become an astonishing fact. Today a group of thirty-one scientists announced the discovery of a terrestrial exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri. The discovery of this planet, Proxima Centauri b, is a huge breakthrough not just for astronomers but for all of us. Here’s why.

Anna Scott

Jet streams are found in planetary atmospheres throughout our solar system. But what exactly are they?

Anna Scott

There are two types of atmospheric waves that are critically important on Earth and other planets: gravity waves and planetary waves.

Jingjing Chen

Until just a few years ago, a plot of mass versus size of other worlds would have looked pretty sparse and uninformative. But thanks to the tireless efforts of exoplanet astronomers, we now know fairly precise masses and radii for hundreds of distant worlds.

Meg Schwamb

Meg Schwamb highlights some of the upcoming space-based missions that will search for planets beyond our solar system.

Bruce Betts

The Planetary Society is launching a new collaboration with Yale exoplanet hunter Debra Fischer and her team, the Exoplanets Laser project. We will support the purchase of an advanced, ultra stable laser to be used in a complex system they are designing to push radial velocity exoplanet hunting to a whole whole new level.

Jaime Green

A team of Colombian researchers are arguing for a new refinement to the idea of the habitable zone that takes the presence of life itself into account.

Jaime Green

Earth and its solar system compatriots all have nearly circular orbits, but many exoplanets orbit their stars on wildly eccentric paths. Is our home system strange? Or is our sense of the data skewed?

Augusto Carballido

How did planets originate? This is a question that has puzzled scientists for centuries, but one which they have been able to tackle directly only in the last few decades, thanks to two major developments: breakthroughs in telescope technology and ever-increasing computing power.