It is exciting to see that the nearest star to our Sun has more than one planet (Proxima b, [1]). In a paper led by Mario Damasso and Fabio Del Sordo [2] revealed the existence of another one. The Proxima c is a planet with an orbital period of about …
In Cassan et al. 2012 (Nature, 481, 167), “One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations“) we read the following very interesting statement: Here we report a statistical analysis of microlensing data (gathered in 2002–07) that reveals the fraction of bound planets 0.5–10 AU (Sun–Earth distance) …
Trawling for transits in a sea of noise: A Search for Exoplanets by Analysis of WASP Optical Lightcurves and Follow-up (SEAWOLF) E. Gaidos, D. R. Anderson, S. Lepine, K. D. Colon, G. Maravelias, N. Narita, E. Chang, J. Beyer, A. Fukui, J. D. Armstrong, A. Zezas, B. J. Fulton, A. …
It is always fascinating when science fiction becomes reality. This is the case with the Kepler-16b, a binary system that proved to host a cold giant planet (like Saturn), which compiles from gas and rocks. This opens a wide new category of planetary systems since most of the stars belong …
An amazing picture was published at the APOD today ! It shows all 1235 candidate planets discovered by Kepler in the same relative scale along with the Sun (top right … the lonely star) with the silhouettes of Earth and Jupiter. Somebody has to search deep in the high resolution …
Kepler is a space based telescope to study a small area between Cygnus and Lyra for exoplanet transits of all possible targets but mainly to find Earth sized candidates in the habitable zone. A fist publication reveals these numbers: “On 1 February 2011 the Kepler Mission released data for 156,453 …