The Kepler mission has found the first near-Earth-size planet – called Kepler-452b – in the “habitable zone” around a G2 star much like our own sun. The Kepler-452 system is located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. “On the 20th anniversary year of the discovery that proved other suns host planets, the Kepler exoplanet […]
Discovered using NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Spitzer Space Telescopes, a brown dwarf star only 7.2 light years distant appears to be the coldest of its kind – as chilly as Earth’s North Pole. “It is very exciting to discover a new neighbor of our solar system that is so close,” said Kevin […]
The two images at top reveal debris disks around young stars uncovered in archival images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The illustration beneath each image depicts the orientation of the debris disks.Using a new image processing technique, astronomers combing through data from the Hubble Space Telescope have identified five planetary disks around young stars […]
A new instrument that combines two high-resolution telescope techniques – adaptive optics and interferometry – has for the first time resolved in visible light the individual stars in the binary star system Capella, 43 light years from Earth. Astronomers using the instrument say it holds great promise for eventually picking out and imaging planets around […]
