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Villanova University astronomer Edward Guinan has had some adventures over the years, from scrounging for black-market cement to make Iran's first high-powered telescope to discovering the rings around Neptune at an observatory in New Zealand.

After a textbook launch Friday night, NASA’s hardy planet hunter Kepler is on its way out of the Earth-moon system. You can read more about it here and here. Kepler is using an interesting technique to spot the planets it’s trying to find. It’s looking for the faint dimming a star’s light will undergo as a planet passes in front of it, as seen along Kepler’s line of sight. It’s called the transit technique. It’s a testament to ever-more sensitive detectors and the ability to put telescopes in space that scientists can use this approach to hunt for planets around...

A planet similar to Earth could be discovered in a distant solar system within three years, according to a leading astronomer. Planets that support life forms could be common in the universe, and about 100bn of them may exist in our own galaxy, said Dr Alan Boss, a researcher at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington. He told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago yesterday that, according to his calculations, there is roughly one Earth-like planet for every star that is similar to our own sun. The US space agency, Nasa, is...

BOULDER, Colorado – The hunt for Earth-like worlds orbiting distant suns will get a big boost next year with the liftoff of NASA’s Kepler mission. That spacecraft’s job is to monitor 100,000 stars in a stellar staring contest intended to detect periodic decreases in a star’s brightness—a falloff of light due to planets transiting their parent stars. Kepler’s pursuit of rocky Earth-sized planets is a step forward in taking on some tough but major questions, such as: Are terrestrial planets common or rare? What are their sizes and distances? What’s more, how often are such worlds detected in the habitable...

To most common terrestrial dwellers, there's no place like Earth. But new simulations show that many Earth-like planets might exist outside of our solar system. Through computer simulations scientists examined the formation and evolution of giant planet systems recently detected outside the Earth's solar system. Their results revealed that more than a third of them might contain planets that could potentially support life and could even be covered with deep oceans. The study focuses on a type of planetary system unlike our solar system that contains gas giants known as "hot Jupiters" orbiting extremely close to their parent stars—even closer...

GREENBELT, Md.: The odds of finding another temperate, Earth-like planet beyond our galaxy may be “significantly higher” than earlier thought, a new study has suggested. Scientists at NASA's Astrobiology Institute said it is more likely to find a planet covered with deep oceans and providing conditions that can sustain life, conditions similar to our own planet. The researchers had focused on the behavior of giant gas planets called 'Hot Jupiters' which are known to orbit very close to their parent. Such gas giants were also observed to plow through any stellar material in its path often creating a “habitable zone”...

Someday astronomers will likely create a long list of Sun-like stars with Earth-like planets around them. But technology has yet to reveal such worlds, instead allowing the detection only of much larger planets. Most of the roughly 200 known extrasolar planets are larger than Jupiter. Many complete their orbital years in just a few days. This proximity to their stars creates noticeable wobbles in the stars that make the planets detectable. But astronomers figure the giants probably formed farther out, in a disk of material swirling around a newborn star, and migrated inward. In doing so they would have destroyed...

Habitable, Earth-like planets can form even after giant planets have barrelled through their birthplace on epic migrations towards their host stars, new computer simulations suggest. The finding contradicts early ideas of how planets behave and suggests future space missions should search for terrestrial planets near known "hot Jupiters". Many of the 160 or so known extrasolar planets are hot Jupiters - massive planets that are closer to their stars than Mercury is to our Sun. But the planets probably did not form in these scorching regions because there would not have been enough gas and dust there to amass such...

March 14, 2006— A team of astronomers has discovered a large, ice-rock planet that dominates a distant solar system, much like Jupiter reigns in our bit of Milky Way real estate. Taking into account other discoveries of extrasolar planets, the finding of an Earth-class planet leads scientists to theorize that the type of planetary system that develops around a star depends on the size of the star.

Due for launch in 2006, Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets outside our Solar System. This week EuroNews takes a closer look at this 30-centimetre diameter space telescope which will be able to detect tiny changes in brightness from nearby stars.

ST. LOUIS - An astronomer involved in a NASA mission to look for Earthlike planets beyond our solar system has winnowed through thousands of stars to come up with a top-10 list that includes some of the favorite haunts for science-fiction aliens. Actually, the lineup from Margaret Turnbull at the Carnegie Institute of Washington is broken down into two top-five lists: one for the radio-based search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, and the other for the NASA mission, known as the Terrestrial Planet Finder. The SETI stars will be on the list of targets for the privately funded Allen Telescope...

Scientists using an observational technique that exploits Albert Einstein's theory of gravity report the discovery of a planet just 5.5 times Earth's mass. The new world, located in Sagittarius toward the Milky Way's center, orbits a cool M-dwarf star 21,500 light-years away. "This finding means that Earth-mass planets are not that uncommon," says Kailash Sahu of Baltimore's Space Telescope Science Institute and a member of the discovery team. "If we found one, there must be more." The new world is the first discovered around another star that agrees with astronomers' theories of how planetary systems form. Princeton astronomer Bohdan Paczynski...

Astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a very young star nearly 100 light years away using a relatively small, publicly accessible telescope turbocharged with a new planet-finding instrument. The feat suggests that astronomers have found a way to dramatically accelerate the pace of the hunt for planets outside our solar system. "In the last two decades, astronomers have searched about 3,000 stars for new planets," said Jian Ge, a professor of astronomy at the University of Florida. "Our success with this new instrument shows that we will soon be able to search stars much more quickly and cheaply - perhaps...

Canada's bargain-basement "Humble" space telescope has launched a search for Earth-sized planets around distant stars, a feat none of the much bigger and costlier telescopes in space or on the ground can match. Its initial survey came up empty, chief scientist Jaymie Matthews announced yesterday at the annual scientific conference of the American Astronomical Society in Washington. Yet the University of British Columbia astronomy professor isn't downcast. "We're the first people who can look for planets about the same size as the Earth and we're the only ones who can tell you what's not there," Matthews joked in an interview....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A telescope turbo-charger called ET has found its first planet outside the solar system, and something that looks like a suitcase in space is tracking possible faraway Earths, astronomers reported on Wednesday. These two small, relatively cheap instruments are part of a new wave of tools and techniques joining the accelerating race to find a world like ours that orbits a different star. Scientists have detected more than 160 so-called extrasolar planets over the last decade. Most have been found by watching for a tell-tale wobble in the stars they orbit. None so far has been a...

A new optical device might allow astronomers to view extrasolar planets directly without the annoying glare of the parent star. It would do this by "nulling" out the light of the parent star by exploiting its wave nature, leaving the reflected light from the nearby planet to be observed in space-based detectors. The device, called an optical vortex coronagraph, is described in the December 15, 2005 issue of Optics Letters. About ten years ago the presence of planets around stars other than our sun was first deduced by the very tiny wobble in the star's spectrum of light imposed by...

A newly discovered planet has bountiful sunshine, with not one, not two, but three suns glowing in its sky. It is the first extrasolar planet found in a system with three stars. How a planet was born amidst these competing gravitational forces will be a challenge for planet formation theories. "The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular," said Maciej Konacki from the California Institute of Technology. "With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world -- literally and figuratively." The triple-star system, HD 188753, is located 149 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The...

Tonight on the Discovery channel. What would life be like when we discover a Earth like planet.. It looks very interesting...

BALTIMORE – Astronomers met last week to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first planet discovered around a normal star other than the Sun. Although more than 130 other such planets have been found since then, the field still feels like it is just getting started.

An asteroid belt may have been found surrounding a star much like our own Sun, according to Dr. Charles Beichman of CIT. His team used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the discovery. If confirmed, this would be the first asteroid belt detected around a star that is about the same age and size as our Sun. If true, it could offer a rare look at a star system that closely resembles our own.