Astronomy

  1. Astronomy

    Revived Kepler mission bags three planet candidates

    During a nine-day engineering test, the Kepler space telescope turned up three potential Jupiter-sized planets orbiting other stars.

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  2. Astronomy

    Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories

    Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.

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  3. Astronomy

    Kepler space telescope finds first ‘mega-Earth’

    'Mega-Earth' has been added to the distinctions that describe exoplanets thanks to a newly announced Kepler space telescope discovery.

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  4. Astronomy

    Feedback

    Readers discuss the speed of spinning particles, what defines a planet and how to see invisible shrimp.

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  5. Astronomy

    Young, hot exoplanet takes title for longest year

    Newly discovered exoplanet sits a whopping 2,000 times farther from its star than Earth does from the sun.

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  6. Planetary Science

    Titan’s haze gives clues to clouds on exoplanets

    Titan’s hazy atmosphere may help astronomers better understand what’s going on in the clouds of exoplanets.

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  7. Astronomy

    Sun shines new life on Kepler space telescope

    NASA approved a proposal to bring the crippled Kepler spacecraft back to life, using sunlight as balance to help the telescope search for planets and more.

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  8. Planetary Science

    Rosetta spacecraft’s comet develops dusty envelope

    Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the target of ESA’s Rosetta mission, has developed a dust coma.

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  9. Astronomy

    Sun’s sibling spotted

    A nearby star may have come from the same birth cluster as the sun; learning how to find other solar siblings could point the way to their common origin.

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  10. Cosmology

    The mysterious boundary

    A debate has arisen over whether an astronaut passing a black hole’s point of no return would get stretched to death or flash-fried. Resolving the controversy may lead to new insights about gravity and more.

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  11. Astronomy

    Milky Way’s far side reveals some secrets

    Variable stars provide first direct measurements of distance to the far side of the Milky Way.

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  12. Astronomy

    Milky Way’s magnetic field mapped

    The Planck telescope sees the galaxy’s magnetic field in polarized light bouncing off interstellar dust grains.

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