Announcements

Kepler Discovery of a Unique Triply Eclipsing Triple Star

Project News • April 7th, 2011

Star HD 181068 , a 7th magnitude star almost visible to the naked eye is in reality a complex triple system in which three stars undergo mutual eclipses as each of the stars gets behind or in front of the others. The most luminous object is a red giant star around which a close pair of two red...

Echoes from the depth of a red giant star

Project News • April 7th, 2011

Continuation of news item from 2011 March 17. Science article: Kepler Detected Gravity-Mode Period Spacings in a Red Giant Star, by P. G. Beck et al. - Asteroseismic observations with the Kepler satellite probed the deep interior of an evolved star.

Giant Stars Reveal Their Inner Secrets for the First Time

Project News • March 30th, 2011

University of Sydney astrophysicists are behind a major breakthrough in the study of stars known as red giants, finding a way to peer deep into their cores to discover which ones are in early infancy, which are fresh-faced teenagers, and which facing their dying days.

Astronomers Detect Echoes from the Depth of a Red Giant Star

Project News • March 17th, 2011

Today an international team of astronomers reports the discovery of waves inside a star that travel so deep that they reach the core. The discovery was possible thanks to precise measurements with the Kepler space telescope.

Can WISE Find the Hypothetical 'Tyche'?

Project News • February 18th, 2011

In November 2010, the scientific journal Icarus published a paper by astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, who proposed the existence of a binary companion to our sun, larger than Jupiter, in the long-hypothesized "Oort cloud" -- a faraway repository of small icy bodies at the edge of...

NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

Project News • February 1st, 2011

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars...

NASA Announces 1,235 Planet Candidates, Some in Habitable Zone, and a 6-Planet System

Project News • February 1st, 2011

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their stars.

NASA's NEOWISE Completes Scan for Asteroids and Comets

Project News • February 1st, 2011

NASA's NEOWISE mission has completed its survey of small bodies, asteroids and comets, in our solar system. The mission's discoveries of previously unknown objects include 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs).

Runaway Star Plows Through Space

Project News • January 24th, 2011

A massive star flung away from its former companion is plowing through space dust. The result is a brilliant bow shock, seen in a new image from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The star, named Zeta Ophiuchi, is huge, with a mass of about 20 times that of our sun. In this...

Partner Galaxies Wildly Different In New WISE Image

Project News • January 13th, 2011

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer has captured a new view of two companion galaxies -- a somewhat tranquil spiral beauty and its rambunctious partner blazing with smoky star formation. The unlikely pair, named Messier 81 and Messier 82, got to know each other a lot better during an...