19.10.09: 32 New Exoplanets Revealed!

Anybody notice the exoplanet tally on our front page hop up to 402 this morning? That’s because the European Southern Observatory (ESO) revealed a stunning 32 (count em!) new exoplanets identified this morning at their conference at Porto, Portugal. The discoveries were thanks to HARPS, the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, a sensitive spectrograph [...]

21.9.9 Will Kepler spot “exo-moons?”

Let the staring begin… the Kepler spacecraft has its shutters open and is now ready for business. Just out the gate, the results have been astounding. First, there was the discovery of HAT-P-7b, a transiting exo-planet that was spotted last month, complete with atmosphere. Now, calculations have shown that Kepler may be sensitive enough during [...]

September 2009:News & Notes.

Is Betelgeuse shrinking? Everyone’s favorite candidate for a nearby supernova has been exhibiting some alarming behavior as of late. The red giant star Betelgeuse, located in the shoulder of Orion, has decreased in size by 15 percent since 1993, equating to a loss of 1% of diameter per year. The finding comes from monitoring [...]

April 2009 News & Notes.

Kepler’s Launch as seen from Jetty Pier. (Credit: JoanneW./Flickr).
The Successful Launch of Kepler: The Kepler space telescope launched successfully last month on March 6th, during a spectacular night launch. Sporting one of the biggest CCD imagers ever to leave Earth, Kepler is bound for an Earth-trailing, heliospheric orbit. Kepler will spend several months staring at [...]