Word: exoplanets
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...years you are: Living on an exoplanet...
...does, astronomers will be able to look for it in unprecedented detail. Since GJ 1214b is only 40 light-years away, which is practically next door in cosmic terms, its atmosphere can be studied more closely than that of any other exoplanet, both with the Hubble Telescope and with the infrared-sensitive Spitzer Space Telescope. Charbonneau's team has already applied for observing time on both scopes to do just that...
...Astrophysics are celebrating the discovery of the smallest known exoplanet—a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun—announced Tuesday by European astronomers. The new planet, Gliese 581 e, is 1.9 times the size of Earth and 80 times smaller than the first exoplanet, which was discovered in 1995. The solar system where the planet was found is 20.5 light years away and can be found in the constellation Libra. Members of the CFA, which has played a major role in the search for exoplanets, heralded the discovery as momentous. “This discovery...
...Unfortunately, to even the most ambitious of NASA's future telescopes, a distant exoplanet would be visible only as a tiny speck of light. We could never hope to see an alien landscape in detail - but perhaps we could see the speck brighten and dim as it rotated, the light of its sun reflecting off water and land...
...success of the experiment made it all worthwhile. Over the course of each evening, Langford watched the earthshine brighten dramatically when sunlight bounced off the Indian Ocean and dim as the African continent rotated into view. The implications for the exoplanet search are profound: If we can see the effect in earthshine, we might also see it in the light of distant world...