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Hot Topic
Deep Space
New Planets
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Nearby Planet Nursery
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| Topic: New Planets |
04/24/04 |
| In an exclusive interview with Berkeley astronomer, Paul Kalas, he describes how their planet-finding team uncovered a nearby nursery that may include the closest star with an embryonic solar system in the making. |
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New Planet, Magnified
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| Topic: New Planets |
04/16/04 |
| The gravity of a star can act as a lens, focusing and intensifying the light of a star behind it. The combined light from the two stars causes that point in the night sky to suddenly appear much brighter. For the first time, a planet has been discovered using this "gravitational microlensing." technique. |
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How Many Earths?
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| Topic: New Planets |
04/01/04 |
| About half of hundred solar systems with known planets may hold potential Earths. Simulating whether such stars and outer planets might eject an Earth-like world, the results also suggest another possibility, a habitable moon around a much larger Jupiter-like world. |
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Nearest Young Planet-forming Star Found
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| Topic: New Planets |
02/26/04 |
| The nearest, youngest star with dusty debris disk - the stuff from which planets form - has been found by Berkeley and Hawaii astronomers a mere 33 light-years away. |
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A Good Planet Is Hard To Find?
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| Topic: New Planets |
02/21/04 |
| Harvard-Smithsonian astronomers have simulated the early planet formation around stars like our own. It turns out that an alien astronomer could have seen the embryonic Earth in its earliest dusty stages. |
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Dying Planet Leaks Carbon-Oxygen
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| Topic: New Planets |
02/02/04 |
| Using the Hubble Space Telescope to view a star dim, international researchers have identified the first extrasolar planet with a carbon and oxygen signature. While unlikely to be habitable, this gas giant adds to the menagerie of other worlds and their unusual properties. |
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Gem Sorting for the Next Earth
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/21/04 |
| Which star is most like our own Sun? This intriguing question offers a chance to test hypotheses about what places might make for a good Earth-like, habitable planet. The best found so far may well be the 37th most westerly star in the constellation, Gemini, called 37 Gem. |
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Twin Planets Survive Solar Blow-Out
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/16/04 |
| Two planets in the constellation Aquarius have been discovered and appear to have survived a catastrophic event in the life of a sun--the inevitable expansion to a red giant. The discovery brings the tally of extrasolar planets found to 118. |
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Planet First Magnetic Roaster
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| Topic: New Planets |
01/11/04 |
| Among the nearly 120 planets discovered so far, the first one with a magnetic field has some surprising behavior. It's enormous size and close orbit may intertwine its magnetic field with a parent star, such that the planet is heating the sun. |
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Vega's Likeness for New Planets
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| Topic: New Planets |
12/09/03 |
| Astronomers at the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Councils UK Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC) at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh have produced compelling new evidence that Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky, has a planetary system around it which is more like our own Solar System. |
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