Last year, an image was released that took our breath away. Exquisite rings carved in a disk of material around a nearby star. Now, astronomers want to know if forming planets are responsible, and why the image might look different from the cartoon in your textbook.
Planets are ubiquitous in the Milky Way. Therefore, building them must be straightforward, right? Not at all!
For the very first time astronomers have used the SOFIA spacecraft to do precise measurements of a transiting exoplanet!
Earth’s atmosphere is about 100 times less massive than Venus’ atmosphere. This gave rise to the idea that Earth had a more massive atmosphere, which got then depleted by impacts. This Astrobite discusses what would have been the optimal impactor size.
By combining galaxy formation histories and planet formation models, we can estimate the number of potential civilizations in our Universe.
Could the origin of eccentricities in giant planets come from the tug-of-war between the planets and their cradles of existence — protoplanetary disks?