On KELT-16b you would melt. I would melt too. A look at an exciting and newly discovered Hot Jupiter, and why KELT-16b is a valuable addition to the group of boiling gas giant planets, and a fantastic target for future atmospheric studies.
Stars at later stages of their evolution lack planets at small orbits, which is believed to be a consequence of disruption. However, the authors of the featured article found a large planet around a star at a late stage of its evolution.
In the era of extremely large telescopes, let’s take look at the opposite end: the extremely little telescopes. KELT, or the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope, is one of them.
The first Kepler mission observed hundreds of thousands of stars, and approximately 7500 of them are of potential interest. In this astrobite, we learn how astronomers are sifting through all these data in search for exoplanets.
Look up in the sky. It’s a bird! No, it’s a background eclipsing binary! No, it’s Kepler-167e: the first transiting exoplanet that’s just like Jupiter!!!
Using a laser we can carefully edit the telltale signs of the Earth’s presence, hiding ourselves away or announcing our presence to other life in the universe. But doing so may be fraught with unknowable consequences that we can never undo. Maybe it’s best to just stay behind the galactic sofa.