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Hot Topic
Deep Space
New Planets
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First Visible Exoplanet?
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| Topic: New Planets |
09/10/04 |
| Faint, failed stars like brown dwarfs are borderline planets themselves, but the European Southern Observatory atop the Chilean mountains may have imaged what could be the first infrared view of an extrasolar planet. |
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Neptune-Class Worlds Found
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| Topic: New Planets |
08/31/04 |
| While striving to find ever smaller, more rocky worlds, planet hunters have moved from discovering not just Jupiter-class planets outside our solar system. Now astronomers have found two new Neptune-class planets on their road to pinpointing a new Earth-like system. |
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Finding Super-Earths
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| Topic: New Planets |
08/26/04 |
| Of the more than 120 extrasolar planets found so far, most are as large or larger than our own Jupiter. Finding rocky worlds like Earth is nearly at the limit of current technology, but the European Southern Observatory in Chile reports finding the smallest super-Earth yet. |
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Backyard Telescopes for New Planets
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| Topic: New Planets |
08/24/04 |
| Could a new world be discovered with a department store telescope having only a small 4-inch diameter lens? It was a little more than a decade ago that the world's most powerful telescopes could just begin to discover extrasolar planets, but with over 120 new worlds found, the technique seems primed to become general. |
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Sweeping for Unseen Worlds
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| Topic: New Planets |
08/17/04 |
| The problem of finding a world one cannot see is detective work for some of the most powerful ground-based telescopes. One challenge is to observe dust disks for signs of planets by their expected swept trails. |
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Cosmic Cowboy
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| Topic: New Planets |
08/05/04 |
| A brand of researcher can now breathe life into the aura of a patient nomad who searches the horizon for signs of a new world. McDonald Observatory astronomer Bill Cochran discusses how a West Texas telescope has begun chalking up discoveries of extrasolar planets. |
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The Search for More Earths
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| Topic: New Planets |
07/16/04 |
| When astronomers first realized that the stars in the sky were like our Sun, only more distant, they wondered if those stars had planets too. And if they have planets, is there life? Intelligent life? There's an answer - yes or no - but we don't know it yet. |
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Get in Line to Find Extrasolar Planet
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| Topic: New Planets |
07/09/04 |
| The largest continental telescope also sees in the darkest sky. Using a novel method to queue its best exposures on a schedule with the full moon, the West Texas observatory has identified its first extrasolar planet around a star comparable in composition to our own Sun. |
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Young Planet Challenges Old Theories
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| Topic: New Planets |
05/28/04 |
| The Spitzer Space Telescope has detected youngest planet ever found, claim NASA scientists. Planets are thought to take millions of years to form after a star is born, but discovery of a million-year old star with planet already in orbit around it means scientists may have to rethink planetary formation models. |
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Two New Very Hot Jupiters
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| Topic: New Planets |
05/11/04 |
| The transit method of new planet discovery relies on observing distant eclipses. Faint starlight decreases once during each orbit as the inferred planet passes between Earth and the star. The second and third new planets discovered using this technique are reported to be large, inner planets, or so-called "hot Jupiters". |
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