The planet TOI-849b is almost as wide as Neptune, but it's an incredibly dense, rocky world that orbits close to its host star.
* * *
About 730 light-years away, not far on the scale of our galaxy, an utterly bizarre planet orbits a sun-like star. Big, dense, and tightly tethered to its home star, the planet is unlike anything astronomers have yet seen—either in our own solar system or afar.
The roasted world known as TOI-849b is the most massive rocky planet ever observed, with as much as 40 Earths' worth of material crammed inside. Perplexingly, TOI-849b's tremendous bulk suggests that it should be a giant, gassy world like Jupiter, yet it has almost no atmosphere. Explaining how such a world emerged challenges what scientists understand about how planets grow.
While you're here, how about this:
Earth-like planets and ocean worlds could be common in our galaxy, studies say - CNN
Watch Colorful Sunsets on Distant Planets in This NASA Simulation | Smart News |
Picture a sunset on planet Earth in all its possible hues: oranges, yellows, reds, and pinks. What would that same sunset look like if you were standing on Venus? What about if you were watching from Mars, or even from far-away Uranus?
All those planets revolve around the same sun, but the view from the ground differs drastically depending on each world’s atmosphere. On icy Uranus, the setting sun turns the bright blue sky to turquoise, while light on Venus fades from a pale yellow to a greenish brown.
Why boring could be good for this star's two intriguing planets
An artist's impression of the two newly discovered planets orbiting GJ 887. Credit: Mark Garlick
The star, called GJ 887, is just under 3.3 parsecs (10.7 light years) from Earth, in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. It is the brightest red-dwarf star visible from Earth.
By contrast, planets in the newfound system could survive relatively unscathed. "GJ 887 is exciting because the central star is so quiet," says Jeffers. "That's the exceptional part."
And here's another article:
Planets and the moon line up on the horizon July 19 | Battlefords News-Optimist
First measurement of spin-orbit alignment on planet Beta Pictoris b -- ScienceDaily
Astronomers have made the first measurement of spin-orbit alignment for a distant 'super-Jupiter' planet, demonstrating a technique that could enable breakthroughs in the quest to understand how exoplanetary systems form and evolved.
An international team of scientists, led by Professor Stefan Kraus from the University of Exeter, has carried out the measurements for the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b -- located 63 light years from Earth.
The planet, found in the Pictor constellation, has a mass of around 11 times that of Jupiter and orbits a young star on a similar orbit as Saturn in our solar system.
A mysterious planet may be hiding at the edge of our solar system
A mysterious planet — called Planet 9 or Planet X — may be hiding at the edge of our solar system. Will we ever find this world?
P lanet nine may be orbiting far from the Sun, at the edge of our solar system. Astronomers, seeing odd irregularities in the orbits of the outer planets suspect another, unknown, planet may orbit beyond the eight we know of today.
The number of known planets in our solar system has risen and fallen over time. From the six worlds known to ancient people (including Earth), astronomers have found the planets Uranus and Neptune.
Planets With Large Oceans are Probably Common in the Milky Way - Universe Today
Which raises the all-important question: are similar moons to be found in other star systems? This is the question NASA planetary scientist Dr. Lynnae C. Quick and her team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center sought to address. In a recent study, Quick and her colleagues examined a sample of exoplanet systems and found that ocean worlds are likely to be very common in our galaxy.
Their study, “ Forecasting Rates of Volcanic Activity on Terrestrial Exoplanets and Implications for Cryovolcanic Activity on Extrasolar Ocean Worlds “, recently appeared in the journal Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific . Joining Dr. Quick were researchers Aki Roberge of NASA Goddard, Amy Barr Mlinar of the Planetary Science Institute (PSI), and Matthew M. Hedman – a physicist from the University of Idaho.
No comments:
Post a Comment