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Four worlds 133 light-years away orbiting a young star. (Jason Wang/Northwestern University) ********************************************************* A new video shared on YouTube is one of the most amazing things we've ever seen in planetary science. The video shows four dots of light moving in partial concentric circles around a black disk at their center. What you're actually looking at is a planetary system. The four dots are exoplanets, with the black disk obscuring their star, 133.3 light-years away from Earth. The partial circles are their orbital motions, a time-lapse compiled from 12 years of observations. The star is HR8799, and in 2008 its...

Illustrations of Beta Pictoris system (l.; c.); the system's dimensions (r.). (GRAVITY Collaboration/Axel M. Quetz, MPIA Graphics Department) ================================================================================ Most of the exoplanets we've confirmed to date have never actually been seen directly. We confirm their presence by indirect means, such as the effect they have on their host star. But now, astronomers have revealed images of an indirectly found exoplanet. It's not just an impressive feat of skills and technology. The combination of methods has given us a superb toolkit for measuring an exoplanet. For the first time, astronomers have measured both the brightness and the mass of...

A stunning, first-of-its-kind photo shows a huge, newfound alien world taking shape in the disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star. The image is the first confirmed direct observation of such a young exoplanet, discovery team members said. "These disks around young stars are the birthplaces of planets, but so far only a handful of observations have detected hints of baby planets in them," discovery leader Miriam Keppler, of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, said in a statement. "The problem is that, until now, most of these planet candidates could just have been...

Astronomers have managed to capture an amazingly clear image of CVSO 30c - a potential exoplanet orbiting a distant star named CVSO 30, that lies some 1,200 light-years away. Besides being breathtaking to look at, researchers are extra excited about the new photo, because it could mean that CVSO 30 actually has two planets orbiting it instead of just one. Follow-up observations and analysis will be needed to confirm CVSO 30c as a true exoplanet, but if verified, this would be the first star system to host both a close-in exoplanet and a far-out exoplanet. Four years ago, astronomers found...

Illustration of COCONUTS-2b. (B. Bays/SOEST/UH) ================================================================================== Exoplanets are tricksy little beasts. As they are very small, very dim, and very far away, seeing them directly is extremely challenging and rare. As such, we usually infer their presence from their effects on their host stars – which means that when we do, on the odd occasion, see one directly, it's a cause for excitement. And excitement is exactly what you should be feeling with the discovery of an exoplanet called COCONUTS-2b, orbiting a star called COCONUTS-2. Not only is COCONUTS-2b (named for the COol Companions ON Ultrawide orbiTS survey) the closest...

A Giant Planet for Beta Pic Credit: A.-M. Lagrange, D. Ehrenreich (LAOG), et al., ESO Explanation: A mere 50 light-years away, young star Beta Pictoris became one of the most important stars in the sky in the early 1980s. Satellite and ground-based telescopic observations revealed the presence of a surrounding outer, dusty, debris disk and an inner clear zone about the size of our solar system -- strong evidence for the formation of planets. Infrared observations from European Southern Observatory telescopes subsequently detected a source in the clear zone, now confirmed as a giant planet orbiting Beta Pic. The...

...the debris disk around a star known as HD 15115 has a needle-like shape... Researchers are studying whether the gravity of a star known as HIP 12545, located about 10 light years from HD 15115, is the reason for the needle formation which appears blue when viewed in optical light with Hubble and near-infrared light with Keck... debris disks such as the one around HD 15115 are believed to be made up of the remnants of planet production. They are also similar to the Kuiper Belt, the region of our solar system extending from and beyond the orbit of Neptune...

Impactor ejects mighty water mass By Jonathan Amos BBC News science reporter, in Leicester Comets hold materials unchanged since the Solar System's formation The Nasa projectile that slammed into Comet Tempel 1 last year kicked out at least 250,000 tonnes of water. The figure comes from UK/US scientists on the Swift telescope, one of many observatories called on to study the US space agency's Deep Impact event. Swift's X-ray data shows more water was released and over a longer time scale than had previously been thought. Researchers hope the new information will help them understand better the nature and construction...

IRC+10216, also known as CW Leonis, was once a well-behaved main-sequence star as our own Sun is now... When astronomers turned the satellite toward IRC+10216 they discovered a substantial cloud of water vapor about 100 AU across. ("AU" --short for Astronomical Unit-- is a unit of length used by astronomers. One AU equals the mean distance between Earth and the Sun.) "There must be about four Earth-masses of frozen water around IRC+10216 to produce the vapor cloud we see," says Melnick. The water vapor probably does not come from the vaporization of oceans on an Earth-like planet, because there wouldn't...

Scientists have speculated that what appeared to be a warp in the main disk of dust was in fact a second disk. Confirmation of its existence has sparked new speculation that there is at least one gas giant in the stellar system. To see the second ring of dust, astronomers had to block the direct light from Beta Pictoris using the (currently offline) Advanced Camera’s coronagraph. The secondary disk, which is inclined at about four degrees from the main disk, is visible as far as 24bn miles from the star, despite being much fainter than the main dust belt. The...