Yesterday, NASA confirmed another new exoplanet from the Kepler mission, Kepler-22b. From some of the headlines, you’d think it was time to pack your bags. The discovery of Kepler-22b is undeniably exciting, but there’s a lot we don’t know about this planet.
Could higher than expected mass-loss rates for evolved massive stars lead to progenitors for peculiar Supernovae?
It is written in The Standard Lore of Astronomy – a leather-bound book professors keep under their desks – that stars in the disks of spiral galaxies have a bimodal distribution of scale heights. Today we will be discussing a paper that comes to the conclusion that the notion of a thick disk and a thin disk is actually a poor approximation to the true distribution of disk stars.
Calculations say there should be evidence of alien life in our own solar system!
Today’s astrobite reviews some of the discoveries of the famous astronomer Allan Sandage, who passed away late last year.