exoplanet

The atmospheres of super-Earths are an astronomer’s window into exoplanet composition.

Scientists would love to travel to these exoplanets to investigate whether any of them have matched Earth’s billion years of climate stability.

To do that, she says, she had to first calculate its mass—a routine part of conducting transmission spectroscopy, which astronomers use to analyze the chemical makeup of exoplanets.

The observatory will detect light from the first generation of galaxies that formed in the early universe after the big bang and study the atmospheres of nearby exoplanets for possible signs of habitability.

Scientists can detect this change in orbital speed over the orbit for exoplanets using different techniques.

Gliese 581g seemed to be the first rocky exoplanet to orbit its host star at the right distance for liquid water on its surface.

The story of Gliese 581g highlights how hard exoplanet-hunting is, and how science at its best is self-correcting.

Now the verdict is in: Gliese 581g is an ex-planet, not an exoplanet.

Exoplanet astronomy—the search for planets orbiting other stars—has two major goals.

The same group of astronomers has also inferred a type of exoplanet that fits in between the rocky planets and the gas giants.