There are more moons than planets in our Solar System that harbor liquid water, and these moons may offer us the best chances of finding life off of Earth. Today’s paper takes the search for habitable moons a step further by investigating how telescopes of the near future might allow us to see and characterize these moons around exoplanets.
Observations of dwarf galaxies show that sites of active star formation have fewer metals. These galaxies may have been diluted by the impact of pristine gas from the cosmic web.
Our current best radial velocities are precise to about 1m/s. How do we make the step towards achieving 10cm/s precision?
While you might expect astronomers to already have a complete understanding of bright stars easily visible to the naked eye like Capella, observations have historically failed to line up with stellar evolution theories. Today’s paper revisits Capella with a new suite of observations to finally uncover some of its secrets.
Although this planet is far from habitable, scientists have confirmed the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere of the WASP-12 system. What does this infer about its planetary atmosphere? Is this in agreement with other studies? The story is not as black and white as we might have thought.
Much of what we know today about exoplanets is due to the success of the radial velocity method. Where does it stand now? What is its future?