Tag Archives: orbiting

Just 5.96 light-years from Earth sits Barnard’s Star, a red dwarf with a fifth of the Sun’s diameter and even less of its mass. Considered a solitary star for its lack of stellar companions, Barnard’s Star is notoriously lonely—signs of any exoplanets in its orbit have come and gone without …

The Earth of today is a lush garden that supports countless living organisms, but give it a few billion years, and Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun. Or maybe not. Astronomers have discovered an Earth-like world 4,000 light-years away that shows another way forward. This world remains intact, …

Humanity has existed for 300,000 years, give or take a millennium. That might sound like a long time when the average human lives at most a few decades, but it’s really just a cosmic blink of the eye. Even if Homo sapiens exceeds all expectations and survives both political strife …

  Humanity has identified thousands of exoplanets, so you’d think we’ve got a pretty good handle on where to look for them. And yet, the universe keeps surprising us. A new study led by Andrew Vanderburg of the University of Wisconsin-Madison reveals a possible exoplanet some 80 light-years away. The …

Astronomers Find Two Super-Earths Orbiting Nearby Red Dwarf The hard work of astronomers around the world using instruments like the Kepler Space Telescope has shown there’s no shortage of planets in the cosmos. Most of those exoplanets are far away, but a handful are right next door (on an astronomical …