Category Archives: Exoplanets

The Super-Saturn

Posted on February 12, 2015 by pgolemanska

Astronomers in the University of Rochester recently discovered a planet with a massive ring system that dwarfs Saturn’s rings. Exoplanet J1407b is a gas giant with 10 to 40 times the mass of Jupiter orbiting a 16-million year old star located 434 light years away. Scientists usually find and study exoplanets and stars when the […] Continue reading →

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The Search for Habitable Exoplanets

Posted on January 24, 2015 by conorastr201

Earlier this month, the Kepler space telescope spotted three planets of Earth-like size orbiting in a nearby star’s “habitable zone,” or the area around the star in which water could exist in liquid form on a planet’s surface. However, the planets they found, along with the other 26 Earth-like exoplanets found thus far, do not […] Continue reading →

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Ammonia Aliens

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Chad F

When we look for planets that harbor alien life, we usually are searching for planets within the habitability zone around their stars.  This habitability zone really is just where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist.  All life on Earth uses water as the solvent for the reactions of life, so it […] Continue reading →

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Lovers of the Extreme

Posted on April 25, 2014 by paanvaannd

<Image from this post from here> The discovery of extremophiles within the last few decades has expanded the amount of worlds viable for some sort of life, and has greatly increased the chance of life being found elsewhere within our galaxy, let alone our own solar system.  Extremophiles are microorganisms on Earth that live, and … Continue reading Lovers of the Extreme → Continue reading →

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Wouldn’t it be something…

Posted on April 8, 2014 by hindsolar

The question of life outside of our planet has been one of great interest for a while in the scientific community. When considering extrasolar planets or planets outside of our solar system I often wonder if there is some other planet in another solar system that is much like ours. Not long ago NASA’s Kepler […] Continue reading →

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Much Stars So Wow 2014-04-06 17:17:05

Posted on April 6, 2014 by gradytlynch

This charismatic account of the first rogue planet discovered touches on many interesting points. The video discusses our ever-changing definition of what constitutes a planet. At first, we simply defined a planet as anything we observed that was similar to our 8 local planets. However, after incredibly massive planets (around ten times the mass of […] Continue reading →

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The Probability of Life “Out There”

Posted on March 16, 2014 by paanvaannd

  Is there other intelligent life in the universe? Mathematically speaking, there’s almost got to be some. In fact, it would be quite surprising to find out that there aren’t other intelligent life forms, let alone simple life. Life as we know it can exist in a plethora of places and environments on Earth itself, … Continue reading The Probability of Life “Out There” → Continue reading →

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Potentially Habitable Planets

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Chad F

Over the past few decades, we have discovered a number of planets outside of our solar system.  The majority of these planets are giants, but a certain few have some Earth-like characteristics.  For these Earth-like planets there is a ranking system to determine how similar they are to Earth.  In the image above, the top […] Continue reading →

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New Discoveries: The New Age of Astronomy

Posted on April 29, 2013 by werdercj

This picture compares the inner planets of our solar system to Kepler-62, a newly discovered planetary system NASA’s Kepler mission has recently discovered three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” or the range of distances form a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water.  It is planets like these […] Continue reading →

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Terrestrial Planets around Metal Poor Stars?

Posted on April 28, 2013 by brendanfeeley

In our book, we learned that it is unlikely for planets to form around a star that is deficient in heavy metals.  In order to form terrestrial planets, you need a second-generation star to form from the nebular ashes of another star that produced heavy elements in its final moments. However, new research from studying […] Continue reading →

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