Exoplanet

A team of astronomers has proposed peering into the inconspicuous region between host stars and their soot lines to find habitable worlds beyond our solar system.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThere are few known…

An artist’s rendering of the planet, called LP 791-18 d.Illustration: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (KRBwyle)On this world, the floor is lava and there’s no couch to jump to: Astronomers have described a planet that…

Photo: John Moore (Getty Images)First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe famous first image of a black hole just got two times sharper. A research team used artificial intelligence to dramatically improve upon its first image…

The Webb Space Telescope recently trained its perceptive gaze on a rocky exoplanet about 26 light-years from Earth and found that it appears to have water vapor in its atmosphere—a shock, given its extremeheat and its proximity to its…

Astronomers have discovered a new exoplanet — but this time, the way they found it may be as significant as the discovery itself. Researchers used a breakthrough combination of indirect and direct planetary detection to locate the…

TRAPPIST-1b is a superhot rocky world just 40 light-years away. Astronomers recently trained the Webb Space Telescope this exoplanet, a world in the TRAPPIST-1 star system, and found that it’s devoid of an atmosphere.The finding could…

The Webb Space Telescope just turned its infrared gaze at an exoplanet and found dense clouds swirling in the atmosphere of this quirky world.The planet—VHS 1256b—has a 22-hour day but sits extraordinarily far from the two stars it…

Four exoplanets, each larger than Jupiter, orbit HR8799, represented by the yellow star shape at the center.Image: Gizmodo/Jason Wang/Northwestern UniversityAstronomical phenomena tend to occur over timespans that dwarf our human scale—a…

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has recorded another inaugural milestone: its first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet. LHS 475 b is just 41 light years away and has a diameter 99 percent of Earth’s. But there’s more work to be…

An artist’s impression of the exoplanet, LHS 475 b, and the star it orbits.Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI)The incredibly powerful Webb Space Telescope—which has fed us dazzling images of the cosmos since July—has…