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Hot Topic
Deep Space
New Planets
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Carbon World
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| Topic: New Planets |
02/08/05 |
| Most of the rocky planets familiar to us are predominantly silicate worlds, but a proposal for carbon or even diamond-like planets may add to the diversity of known solar systems. |
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Moon, Planet or Star?
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| Topic: New Planets |
02/08/05 |
| A strange miniature solar system may be composed of a star only slightly larger than a planet. At this scale, are the celestial objects that orbit it, planets or moons? |
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Race for Pale Blue Dot Image Quickens
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/16/05 |
| Astronomers announced the first results of a search for extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs in an unlikely place--the stellar graveyard. A research team found two candidate planets in its survey of 20 dead stars--white dwarfs at distances between 24 and 220 light-years. |
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Hubble Spies New World
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/11/05 |
| In the southern constellation Hydra, about 225 light-years away orbits what may be a planet and its parent brown dwarf star. Because an extrasolar planet has never been directly imaged before, this remarkable observation required Hubble's unique abilities to do follow-up to test and validate if it is indeed a planet. |
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New Worlds, Living Large
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/04/05 |
| Counting down the top ten astrobiology stories for 2004 highlights the accomplishments of those exploring Mars, Saturn, comets, and planets beyond Pluto. Number three in this countdown was the remarkable progress in discovering new planets in other solar systems. |
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Planet Swapping
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| Topic: New Planets |
12/05/04 |
| Could a passing star exchange planets with our own Sun? Computer simulations suggest that a glancing blow might contribute far outer planets following star disk collisions. |
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The Planet that Shouldn't Be
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| Topic: New Planets |
11/11/04 |
| Theories of planet formation have certain prerequisites: the solar system that hosts the planet should be of a certain age, temperature and size. For planet hunters, the outliers may present some of the most interesting candidates. One such Neptune-class planet seems to defy the rules. |
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Extrasolar Planets: A Matter of Metallicity
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| Topic: New Planets |
10/11/04 |
| The 130 extrasolar planets discovered so far are in solar systems very different from our own, in which life-bearing planets like Earth are unlikely to exist. But an obscure characteristic of these planets and their stars has led astronomers to predict that our galaxy is brimming with solar systems like ours. |
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Pinhole Camera to Image New Worlds
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| Topic: New Planets |
09/30/04 |
| A University of Colorado study has embarked on demonstrating that new planets can be found with the help of an orbiting starshade. The method has been compared to building a giant pinhole camera in space. |
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Coming Soon: "Good Jupiters"
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| Topic: New Planets |
09/29/04 |
| Most of the extrasolar planets discovered to date are gas giants like Jupiter, but their orbits are either much closer to their parent stars or are highly eccentric. Planet hunters are on the verge of confirming the discovery of Jupiter-size planets with Jupiter-like orbits. |
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