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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star. This breakthrough is an important step toward finding chemical biotracers of extraterrestrial life.
As an avid fly fisherman and geocaching enthusiast, Robert Peters is a natural hunter, which makes him the perfect person to work on technology to help find Earthlike planets.
A team of French astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have discovered an object located very close to the star Beta Pictoris, and which apparently lies inside its disc.
New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope indicate that the nearest planetary system to our own has two asteroid belts. Our own solar system has just one.
NASA's new coronagraph laboratory, called the Ames Coronagraph Experiment (ACE) Laboratory, is pushing development of a new optics system to enable scientists to observe Earth-like planets that otherwise would be lost in the glare of the stars they orbit.
COROT has discovered a massive planet-sized object orbiting its parent star closely, unlike anything ever spotted before. It is so exotic, that scientists are unsure as to whether this oddity is actually a planet or a failed star.
It's fitting that Sara Seager is fascinated by stories of explorers visiting uncharted places. From her groundbreaking work on the detection of exoplanet atmospheres to her innovative theories about life on other worlds, Seager has been a pioneer in the vast and unknown world of exoplanets.
NASA has awarded five-year grants, averaging $7 million each, to 10 research teams from across the country to study the origins, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe.
NASA has announced new Carl Sagan Fellowships for the study of extraterrestrial worlds and the life they might sustain -- a scientific pursuit pioneered by Sagan decades ago. Sagan played a key role in the NASA missions Mariner, Viking, Galileo and Voyager, and later advocated for NASA's Kepler mission, scheduled to launch in April 2009.
NASA has announced new Carl Sagan Fellowships for the study of extraterrestrial worlds and the life they might sustain -- a scientific pursuit pioneered by Sagan decades ago. Sagan played a key role in the NASA missions Mariner, Viking, Galileo and Voyager, and later advocated for NASA's Kepler mission, scheduled to launch in April 2009.
Thanks to a growing Internet community of exoplanet enthusiasts, some of the latest discoveries are being made and confirmed by amateurs - people who planet-hunt in their spare time and with their own telescopes.
Just 13 years after the discovery of the first planet orbiting a sun-like star, scientists have found more than 300 exoplanets, from char-broiled "hot Jupiters" that orbit their stars in a matter of days, to planets closer in size and composition to our own.
Webster Cash's passion for space began when he saw his first planetarium show as a child. Now, as the principal investigator for one of NASA's future exoplanet mission proposals, Cash is on the cutting edge of ideas that could help change our perception of the universe.
