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There may be small, rocky planets in the nearby Alpha Centauri triple-star system that have been overlooked, according to a new study published in the Astronomical Journal Alpha Centauri, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, Rigil Kent and Gliese 559, is the closest stellar system to Earth. This triple system is made up of the bright binary star formed by Alpha Centauri A and B, plus the faint red dwarf star Alpha Centauri C. The two brighter components are roughly 4.35 light-years away from us. Alpha Centauri C, better known as Proxima Centauri, is slightly closer, at 4.23 light-years. Compared to...

A leading astronomer studying the origins of the space object known as Oumuamua has come out declaring it’s an alien probe with broken engines. Dr. Jason Wright claims that Oumuamua’s movement is that of a craft that has lost power to its engines. Right now, leading scientists are studying the odd “cigar-shaped” object which originated outside of our solar system. Teams lead by renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, are attempting to discover whether or not Oumuamua is alien or natural. If a radio signal is detected later today, scientists will “proceed with caution.” Professor Avi Loeb, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard...

Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial signals The cigar-shaped object, named 'Oumuamua, sailed past Earth last month The mysterious comet is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system Now a team of alien-hunting scientists led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is scanning the object for radio signals Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial technology. The cigar-shaped asteroid, named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers, sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system. A team of alien-hunting scientists, led by Russian...

A unique opportunity to study the dwarf planet Haumea has led to an intriguing discovery: Haumea is surrounded by a ring. Add this to the already long list of unique things about the weird-shaped world with a dizzying rotation and a controversial discovery. On January 21, 2017 Haumea passed in front of a distant star, in an event known as an occultation. The background star can – pardon the pun – shine a light on the object passing in front, providing information about a distant object — such as size, shape, and density — that is otherwise difficult to obtain....

Kathryn Volk and Renu Malhotra at the University of Arizona have noticed some strange movement out in the Kuiper belt…movement that they believe could suggest the existence of a tenth planet. ... Objects in the Kuiper belt are far enough away from the other major bodies in our solar system that the gravitational influence of the large planets doesn’t impact them (at least, not to a measurable degree); however, their movements can still be predicted, thanks to sky surveys and a host of advanced technologies. The search for Planet Nine has lead scientists to believe that it is orbiting around...

With scalding surface temperatures of a hellish 4,327°C, researchers have discovered the hottest planet ever found. The planet, named KELT-9b, is 650 light years away, and so close to its host star its orbit takes just a day and a half. Researchers hope their findings will shed light on how planetary systems form around hot, massive stars.

Planetary Discovery around Ultracool Starby Paul Gilster on April 28, 2017 I have a special enthusiasm for microlensing as a means of exoplanet discovery. With microlensing, you never know what you’re going to come up with. Transits are easier to detect when the planet is close to its star, and hence transits more frequently. Radial velocity likewise sends its loudest signal when a planet is large and close. Microlensing, detecting the ‘bending’ of light from a background object as it is affected by a nearer star’s gravitational field, can turn up a planet whether near to its star or far,...

The International Astronomical Union currently defines a planet as: "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." A newly suggested definition takes a different approach:

In January, astronomers revealed evidence for the potential existence of another planet in the solar system. Researchers suggest that if this world — dubbed Planet Nine — exists, it could be about 10 times Earth's mass and orbit the sun at a distance about 500 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Previous research suggested that Planet Nine would possess a highly tilted orbit compared with the relatively thin, flat zone in which the eight official planets circle the sun. This led scientists to investigate whether Planet Nine's slant might help explain other tilting seen elsewhere in the...

An artist's impression of the planet Proxima b, orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, released by the European Southern Observatory on August 24, 2016 A rocky planet discovered in the "habitable" zone of the star nearest our Sun may be covered with oceans, researchers at France's CNRS research institute said Thursday. A team including CNRS astrophysicists have calculated the size and surface properties of the planet dubbed Proxima b, and concluded it may be an "ocean planet" similar to Earth. Scientists announced Proxima b's discovery in August, and said it may be the first exoplanet—planet outside our Solar System—to...

Astronomers hunting for Planet Nine have found some 50 new objects lying beyond the orbit of Neptune – including a few that may help them track down this elusive, distant world. The new discoveries, described in a paper accepted to the Astronomical Journal, mark another step toward finding this mysterious giant planet, which could help rewrite our understanding of our own solar system. In 2014, astronomers Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and Chadwick Trujillo of Northern Arizona University announced that they’d found an object with the most distant orbit ever observed in the solar system – a...

In a paper that was recently accepted by The Astronomical Journal, Sheppard and Trujillo present their latest discoveries, which they claim are further constraining the location of Planet 9. ...Sheppard and Trujillo relied on information obtained by the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor Blanco 4-meter telescope in Chile and the Japanese Hyper Suprime-Camera on the 8-meter Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. ... Their most recent discovery was a small collection of more extreme objects who’s peculiar orbits differ from the extreme and inner Oort cloud objects, in terms of both their eccentricities and semi-major axes. As with discoveries made using...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2016 August 25 Closest Star has Potentially Habitable Planet Image Credit & License: Y. Beletsky (LCO), ESO, Pale Red Dot Team Explanation: The star closest to the Sun has a planet similar to the Earth. As announced yesterday, recent observations confirmed that this planet not only exists but inhabits a zone where its surface temperature could allow liquid water, a key ingredient for life on Earth. It is...

After scanning the vast reaches of the cosmos for Earth-like planets where life might exist, astronomers have found one right next door. NASA's New Horizons probe, the fastest spacecraft launched, left Earth hurtling toward Pluto at about 36,000 mph. At that speed, it would take more than 78,000 years to get there.

The hunt for exoplanets has been heating up in recent years. Since it began its mission in 2009, over four thousand exoplanet candidates discovered by the Kepler mission, several hundred of which have been confirmed to be “Earth-like” (i.e. terrestrial). And of these, some 216 planets have been shown to be both terrestrial and located within their parent star’s habitable zone (aka. “Goldilocks zone”).

Using a telescope at the top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, scientists have discovered a new dwarf planet in our solar system, a body about 435 miles across that lacks a name and that researchers still know little about. The new dwarf planet, dubbed 2015 RR245, has such a huge, highly elliptical orbit that it takes an astonishing 700 Earth years to complete one trip around the sun, and it ventures over 120 times further away from the sun than our planet does. "The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the Sun....

Discovery images of RR245. The images show RR245's slow motion across the sky over three hours. Credit: OSSOS team ================================================================================================ An international team of astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet orbiting in the disk of small icy worlds beyond Neptune. The new object is roughly 700 kilometers in size and has one of the largest orbits for a dwarf planet. Designated 2015 RR245 by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, it was found using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Maunakea, Hawaii, as part of the ongoing Outer solar system Origins Survey (OSSOS). "The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how...

Pluto isn't quite as lonely as scientists had thought. Astronomers have discovered another dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, the ring of icy objects beyond Neptune. But this newfound world, dubbed 2015 RR245, is much more distant than Pluto, orbiting the sun once every 700 Earth years, scientists said. (Pluto completes one lap around the sun every 248 Earth years.) "The icy worlds beyond Neptune trace how the giant planets formed and then moved out from the sun," discovery team member Michele Bannister, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said in a statement. "They let us piece together...

Planet Nine is out there, and astronomers are determined to find it, according to a new statement from NASA. ... While the mysterious world still has yet to be found, astronomers have discovered a number of strange features of our solar system that are best explained by the presence of a ninth planet, according to the NASA statement. In 2016, Batygin and co-author Mike Brown, an astronomer at Caltech, published a study that examined the elliptical orbits of six known objects in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy bodies stretching from Neptune outward toward interstellar space. Their findings...

Up for Grabs In Science, When 'Anything Goes,' Everything Goesby Denyse O'Leary Family values activist Austin Ruse's new book, Fake Science: Exposing the Left's Skewed Statistics, Fuzzy Facts, and Dodgy Data (Regnery, 2017), offers a look at a world growing increasingly hostile to evidence-based reasoning. We have not discovered better reasoning methods; rather, many people seem to have decided that reasoning is not relevant to our life together, and perhaps not relevant to the life of the mind generally. Ruse begins his book with a note about polls. Opinion pollsters claim that their work is a scientific enterprise. But in...