When it comes to extrasolar planets, appearances can be deceiving. Astronomers have imaged a new planet, and it appears nearly identical to one of the best studied gas-giant planets. But this ...
The nearby star Vega holds a special place in human culture. Located just 25 light-years away, this shining beacon—about twice the mass of the sun and 40 times as bright—is so prominent in Earth’s ...
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Are planets born more easily around two suns?
For a long time, astronomers thought that binary star systems, where two stars orbit each other, were too chaotic for planets to form in large numbers. The competing gravitational forces seemed to ...
The star would have inflated up to 1.5 times the planet's orbital distance -- engulfing the planet in the process -- before shrinking to its current size at only one-tenth of that distance. When our ...
The infrared spectra of 2MASS 0249 c (top) and beta Pictoris b (bottom) are similar, as expected for two objects of comparable mass that formed in the same stellar nursery. Unlike 2MASS 0249 c, beta ...
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