A new search of NASA's Kepler space telescope archive has uncovered a vampire star system undergoing super-outburst. Crafted to search for exoplanets, the spacecraft sometimes spots other objects that brighten or dim. The newly-discovered star system consists of…
Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of planet – a rocky world weighing 17 times as much as Earth. Theorists believed such a world couldn't form because anything so hefty would grab hydrogen gas as it grew and become a Jupiter-like gas gi
Astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" – the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet and could possibly sustain life. The planet, called
Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a
