News by Subject Space & Planetary

Now, astronomers have used Hubble to nab a second 'very warm' Neptune (GJ 3470b) that is losing its atmosphere at a rate 100 times faster than that of GJ 436b. Both planets reside about 3.7 million miles from their star. That's one-tenth the distance between our solar system's innermost planet, Mercury, and the Sun.

In their quest to learn more about faraway planets, astronomers discovered that a medium-sized planet roughly the size of Neptune is evaporating at a rate 100 times faster than a previously discovered planet of similar size.

'Where did the hot Neptunes go?' This is the question astronomers have been asking for a long time, faced with the mysterious absence of planets the size of Neptune. A team of researchers led by UNIGE has just discovered that one of these planets is losing its atmosphere at a frantic pace. This observation strengthens the theory that hot Neptunes have lost much of their atmosphere and turned into smaller planets called super-Earths.

UNLV researchers Shangjia Zhang and Zhaohuan Zhu led a team of international astronomers in a study that used the powerful ALMA telescope to discover that in other parts of the Milky Way Galaxy (seen here) there is potentially a large population of young planets -- similar in mass to Neptune or Jupiter -- at wide-orbit that are not detectable by other current planet searching techniques.

A team of astronomers has conducted ALMA's first large-scale, high-resolution survey of protoplanetary disks, the belts of dust and gas around young stars.

New work from the Carnegie Supernova Project provides the best-yet calibrations for using type Ia supernovae to measure cosmic distances, which has implications for our understanding of how fast the universe is expanding and the role dark energy may play in driving this process. The research was led by Carnegie astronomer Chris Burns.

Spectral observations made by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft identified hydrated minerals across the asteroid, confirming that Bennu, a remnant from early in the formation of the solar system, is an excellent specimen for the OSIRIS-REx mission to study the composition of primitive volatiles and organics.

The first unbiased survey of protoplanetary disks surrounding young stars in the Taurus star-forming region turned up a higher-than-expected number of disks with features suggesting nascent planets, according to a study by an international team of astronomers involving researchers at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory and Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.