Early Tuesday morning, an extraordinary site began to unfold in the dark sky visible to the naked eye. Three planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury, aligned their orbits, creating the optical effect of appearing side by side, reports Passant Rabie for Inverse . The "planetary trio" will also be in conjunction with a waning crescent moon for three successive mornings until Thursday, March 11, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes . The alignment gives us a rare peek at Mercury.
Other things to check out:
How can some planets be hotter than stars? We've started to unravel the mystery
Quentin Changeat has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, and from the Science and Technology Funding Council (STFC).
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Until the early 2000s, the only known planets were located in our own neighbourhood, the Solar System. They broadly form two categories: the small rocky planets in the inner Solar System and the cold gaseous planets located in the outer part. With the discovery of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, additional classes of planets were discovered and a new picture started to emerge . Our Solar System is by no means typical.
Metal-rich environment crucial for light giant planets, but not for heavy giant ones : The
A metal-rich environment of host stars is vital for the formation of Jupiter-type light, but it is not necessary for the long orbit heavy giant planets, a research on exoplanets has found. Planets called exoplanets orbit stars similar to the Sun, forming their own stellar system.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research investigated the host star properties for the directly imaged exoplanets to understand various formation scenarios for these wide orbit celestial objects.
Astro Bob: Massive, hot planet may orbit Vega | Duluth News Tribune
As of March 10 we know of 4,692 planets orbiting stars beyond our own. The vast majority of these extrasolar planets circle lesser-known stars, but a potential new discovery may change that. Astronomers have discovered hints of a giant, blazingly hot planet orbiting Vega, one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
Vega twinkles low in the northeastern sky around 11 p.m. - midnight in mid-March. It's the second brightest star in northern skies after Arcturus and the brightest star in the small constellation, Lyra the Harp. (Bob King)
Many things are taking place:
Other planets in our Milky Way may have continents just like Earth | Space
Scientists believe there may be planets in the Milky Way galaxy that have water and landmass properties similar to that of Earth.
A new study suggests that water may be present during a planet's formation, with the researchers noting this was true for Earth, Mars and Venus. And because there's nothing special about our solar system, the same conditions likely occurred as exoplanets in the galaxy formed.
"All our data [computer modeling] suggest that water was part of Earth's building blocks, right from the beginning," Anders Johansen, the lead author of the new research and an astronomer at the University of Copenhagen, said in a statement . "Because the water molecule is frequently occurring, there is a reasonable probability that it applies to all planets in the Milky Way. The decisive point for whether liquid water is present is the distance of the planet from its star."
Newfound super-Earth alien planet whips around its star every 0.67 days | Space
We keep getting reminders that the Milky Way's planetary diversity dwarfs what we see in our own solar system.
The newfound exoplanet TOI-1685 b is yet another case in point. Astronomers found it circling a dim red dwarf star about 122 light-years from Earth. "Circling" is too ordinary a world for TOI-1685 b's motion, however; the alien world whips around its parent star once every 0.67 Earth days.
Red dwarfs , also known as M dwarfs, are much smaller and dimmer than Earth's sun, but TOI-1685 b's extreme proximity to its host star, called TOI-1685, makes it a very toasty world nonetheless. The discovery team estimates its surface temperature to be around 1,465 degrees Fahrenheit (796 degrees Celsius).
Distant Planet May Be On Its Second Atmosphere, NASA's Hubble Finds – Exoplanet Exploration:
Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that a planet orbiting a distant star that may have lost its atmosphere but gained a second one through volcanic activity.
The planet, GJ 1132 b, is hypothesized to have begun as a gaseous world with a thick hydrogen blanket of atmosphere. Starting out at several times the diameter of Earth, this so-called “sub-Neptune” is believed to have quickly lost its primordial hydrogen and helium atmosphere due to the intense radiation of the hot, young star it orbits. In a short period of time, such a planet would be stripped down to a bare core about the size of Earth. That’s when things got interesting.
Astronomers Discover Sixth Planet in K2-138 Planetary System | Astronomy | Sci-News.com
Five sub-Neptunes and one super-Earth exoplanet orbit a moderately bright K-type star called K2-138.
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Also known as 2MASS J23154776-1050590 and EPIC 245950175, the star is slightly smaller and cooler than our Sun.
In 2018, a team of citizen scientists and professional astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler/K2 mission discovered five massive planets — named K2-138b, c, d, e, and f — orbiting the star.
Happening on Twitter
The "planetary trio" will be in conjunction with a waning crescent moon for three successive mornings until Thursda… https://t.co/fyabuXbL4s SmithsonianMag (from Washington, D.C.) Thu Mar 11 00:11:20 +0000 2021
Although the planets seem like they are close in proximity and we can see them in the Earthly skies they are millio… https://t.co/JDimiNXMhE SmithsonianMag (from Washington, D.C.) Thu Mar 11 04:30:09 +0000 2021
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