An exoplanet in its star’s habitable Goldilocks zone is now suspected of having a liquid water ocean and an atmosphere. The planet, called LHS 1140 b, is about 1.7 times the size of Earth and is located about 48 light-years away. This distant world, first discovered in 2017, now turns out to be a rocky … Read more
Planets beneath Neptune that dance in time with the rest of their planetary systems have lower densities than planets that don’t, planetary scientist David Brown has discovered. Though conspicuously absent from the solar system, the most common planets in the Milky Way are known as “sub-Neptunes,” or worlds with sizes between Earth and the ice … Read more
Webb’s mid-infrared instrument, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory until launch, also revealed jets of gas streaming into space from the twin stars. Scientists recently got a big surprise from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope when they pointed the observatory at a group of young stars called WL 20. The region has been … Read more
This article was reviewed according to Science fact checked trusted source proofread OK! This image shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. These stars are so close that they could be prime targets for direct searches for planets using future telescopes. The blue halos represent stars observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and … Read more
This image shows a three-dimensional map of stars near the Sun. These stars are so close that they could be prime targets for direct searches for planets using future telescopes. The blue halos represent stars observed with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton. The yellow star in the center of this diagram represents the … Read more
Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the richest ‘menu’ of hydrocarbons ever seen in a planet-forming disk. This observation, which involved the protoplanetary disk around a small star, also revealed the first detection of ethane outside the Solar System. The discovery was made when the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument … Read more