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Hot Topic
Deep Space
New Planets
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Astrobiology Top 10: Icy Super Earth
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/02/07 |
| Astrobiology Magazine is looking back over 2006, highlighting the Top 10 astrobiology stories of the year. At number 6 is the discovery of an icy "Super Earth." Astronomers have found over 200 planets orbiting other stars, but most of them are more massive than the planet Jupiter. |
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Pale Blue Dot III: An Astrobiological Field Report
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| Topic: New Planets |
11/27/06 |
| In this essay, David Grinspoon provides an overview of the "Pale Blue Dot III" workshop recently held in Chicago. While the overall scientific theme of the workshop was finding habitable Earthlike planets around other stars, communicating that science to the general public was also a major focus. |
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Rocky Worlds
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| Topic: New Planets |
11/03/06 |
| The COROT space telescope is proceeding smoothly towards its launch in December 2006. Once in orbit, COROT will become the first spacecraft devoted to the search for rocky planets, similar to our own Earth. |
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Planets by Numbers
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| Topic: New Planets |
10/27/06 |
| More than a decade after the first planets beyond our solar system were found, astronomers have discovered about 200 of these "extrasolar planets," as they're called. Using a common-sense definition, scientists have calculated how many potentially habitable planets might be detected around other stars by the SIM PlanetQuest mission. |
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Fire and Ice
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| Topic: New Planets |
10/19/06 |
| NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has made the first measurements of the day and night temperatures of a planet outside our solar system. The infrared observatory revealed that the Jupiter-like gas giant planet circling very close to its sun is always as hot as fire on one side, and potentially as cold as ice on the other. |
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Systemic Planet Hunting
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| Topic: New Planets |
10/13/06 |
| Astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, are seeking the public's help to find and understand planets outside our solar system. But you don't need an advanced degree or even a telescope to participate--just a computer, access to the Internet, and an interest in astronomy. |
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In the Beginning there was Dust
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| Topic: New Planets |
10/10/06 |
| NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, in collaboration with ground-based observatories, has provided definitive evidence for the existence of the nearest extrasolar planet to our solar system. |
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Puffed Planets
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| Topic: New Planets |
09/15/06 |
| Using a network of small automated telescopes known as HAT, Smithsonian astronomers have discovered a planet unlike any other known world. This new planet, designated HAT-P-1, orbits one member of a pair of distant stars 450 light-years away in the constellation Lacerta. |
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Draconian Planet
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| Topic: New Planets |
09/09/06 |
| Our home solar system may be down by a planet with recent demotion of Pluto, but number of giant planets discovered in orbit around other stars continues to grow steadily. Now, an international team of astronomers detected a planet slightly larger than Jupiter that orbits a star 500 light-years from Earth. |
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Finding Earths Through Simulation
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| Topic: New Planets |
07/26/06 |
| The steady discovery of giant planets orbiting stars other than our sun has heightened speculation that there could be Earth-type worlds in nearby planetary systems capable of sustaining life. |
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