26.10.09:Seeing Starspots.

We know more about our Sun than any other star because it gives us the opportunity to study solar activity up close. But just how normal is it? Recently, astronomers have been able to spy activity on other suns, teasing the data out of exoplanet transits. These are planets that happen to cross the tiny [...]

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 [...]

The Moon joins a Planetary Three-Way.

Three planets and one Moon. (Credit: Stellarium).
Early risers this week will awaken to a fine sight; a three way dance between Mercury, Saturn, and Venus, joined by the waning crescent Moon on the 16th. Look towards the east, about a half hour before local sunrise. Mercury has just passed greatest elongation on the 6th [...]

02.10.09: A Small Observatory Helps with a Big Discovery.

When it comes to cutting edge astronomy, many think of lofty mountaintop behemoths, such as Keck, or the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. But how many of us think of… Gainesville, Florida? This article caught my eye this morning because its literally right in our backyard here at Astroguyz HQ in Hudson, Florida. As any would-be [...]

23.9.9 CoRoT-7b: A Rare Earth.

The “Super-Earths” are getting smaller. Recently, the ESA announced that an exoplanet discovered on February 3rd of this year by the CoRoT (Convection Rotation and planetary Transit) satellite is one of the lightest yet… at about five Earth masses, this transiting exoplanet is about twice the diameter of the Earth. But don’t pack your bags [...]

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 [...]

Next Page »