News by Subject Space & Planetary

When massive stars die at the end of their short lives, they light up the cosmos with bright, explosive bursts of light and material known as supernovae. A supernova event is incredibly energetic and intensely luminous -- so much so that it forms what looks like an especially bright new star that slowly fades away over time.

Based on preliminary results from a new Gemini Observatory survey of 531 stars with the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), it appears more and more likely that large planets and brown dwarfs have very different roots.

For 10 years, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has scanned the sky for gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), the universe's most luminous explosions. A new catalog of the highest-energy blasts provides scientists with fresh insights into how they work.

A survey of 300 stars in search of exoplanets finds that massive, Jupiter-like gas giants are found just about where Jupiter is in our own solar system. Most such massive planets occur around stars weighing 1.5 solar masses, with few around sun-like stars. Though the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey found just six planets and three brown dwarfs around these 300 stars, the survey provides much-needed statistics on large planet masses and orbits.

Analysis from halfway through the Gemini Planet Imager's planetary survey hints that our solar system may have rare qualities which could possibly be related to the habitability of Earth.

The newly-discovered dark dwarf galaxy Antlia 2's collision with the Milky Way may be responsible for our galaxy's characteristic ripples in its outer disc, according to a study led by Rochester Institute of Technology Assistant Professor Sukanya Chakrabarti.

Hundreds of thousands of volunteers have helped to overturn almost a century of galaxy classification, in a new study using data from the longstanding Galaxy Zoo project. The new investigation, published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, uses classifications of over 6000 galaxies to reveal that 'well known' correlations between different features are not found in this large and complete sample.

Scientists may need to rethink their estimates for how many planets outside our solar system could host a rich diversity of life. In a new study, a UC Riverside-led team discovered that a buildup of toxic gases in the atmospheres of most planets makes them unfit for complex life as we know it.