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#exoplanet — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #exoplanet, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Quantum Physics Could Help Us Find Earth 2.0
    atlas.whatip.xyz/post.php?slug
    <p>When astronomers talk about directly imaging an exoplanet that is orbiting a far away star
    #astronomers #exoplanet #quantum #physics

  2. Circling Exoplanet 48539 is the -now defunct- experimental FTL (Faster Than Light) technology centre. With a circumference of over 85 kilometres, this particle accelerator helped to prove the underlying principles of how my ship works. Don’t ask me to describe it, it’s something to do with particles repelling, attracting and opposites together on the other side of the galaxy, all at the same time. But then again, it’s not complicated at all, I just push this button and it jumps.

    #scifi #exoplanet #MicroFiction #acorn #spring #nature #photography

  3. 🌍☀️ Scientists at #ArizonaState and #Caltech used the #JWST to produce the first weather report for WASP-94A b, a gas giant 700 light-years from #Earth.

    The #planet has two different #weather sides: a morning edge with #clouds made of vaporized #rock and an almost cloud-free evening edge, driven by temperature differences and powerful winds.

    👉 scientificamerican.com/article

    #exoplanet #space #nasa #astronomy #wasp94ab #science #telescope #atmosphere #spectroscopy

  4. Here is a problem that has been quietly gnawing at astronomers for decades.

    The standard approach to detecting #life on other worlds involves scanning #exoplanet #atmospheres for #oxygen, #methane, and #ozone, whose presence is difficult to explain without #biology.

    It's a clever idea, but it carries a hidden flaw. That entire shopping list was written by studying Earth. It is, inevitably, a search for life like us.

    The list of ways that #chemistry alone can accidentally mimic these #biosignature gases is growing faster than the list of new ways to detect life.

    Each new false positive scenario demands even more information about the #planet to rule it out, and there is a genuine question about whether that information can ever be gathered exhaustively.

    But there is a solution.

    #Assembly theory doesn't ask what #molecules are present in an #atmosphere. Instead, it asks how hard they were to make.

    Every molecule can be assigned an assembly index, a minimum number of construction steps required to build it from basic #chemical building blocks.

    Simple molecules are easy to assemble by chance, but truly complex ones, requiring many sequential steps, don't arise without something doing a great deal of deliberate selection.

    That something would then be life itself.

    #astrobiology #astronomy
    phys.org/news/2026-03-life.html

    Paper by Walker et al. (2026): arxiv.org/abs/2603.11086

  5. This is the spectroscopic transit of a #planet with an orbital period of 1.5 YEARS !! #HIP41378 🪐

    In case you missed the great paper led by @sgrouffal (#ProudAdvisor), arXived over the summer, here is a recap'.

    The planet HIP41378 f is a Saturn-sized transiting planet with an orbital period of 542 days. It means we can observe its transit only once every 1.5 years - it's actually once every 3 years from the ground as the host star is too close to the Sun (as seen from the Earth) every other transits.

    With such a long orbital period and a nearly circular orbit, the transit event lasts 19 hours (!). Hence, from the ground, any observer could only observe a tiny fraction of the transit. To overcome this issue, back in 2022, we set up a worldwide collaboration of almost all high-resolution radial-velocity spectrographs across the globe. Over the same night, all the instruments observed the target HIP41378 at the time of planet'f transit, allowing us to detect the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect.

    The RM effect is measuring the planet's orbital obliquity, i.e. the angle between the orbital plane and the spin axis of the star. While this angle is ~0º in the solar system, for HIP41378 it reaches Ψ=~52º.

    [1/2]

    #Science #Space #Exoplanet #Astrophysics #Astronomy #telescope

  6. The recent claims of #biosignature detection in the atmosphere of #exoplanet K2-18b does not convince anyone.

    A new paper demonstrates that other non-biological interpretations can also explain the data.

    Reanalysing the dataset used in the original biosignature detection paper through multiple other models reveals good fits for models that abiological processes could entirely explain.

    One particular model that included the hydrocarbon propyne fit the data better than the model containing DMS and its cousin, dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which was interpreted as biosignature detection April.

    #astronomy #exoplanets
    phys.org/news/2025-05-ways-atm

  7. Here the red dwarf #K2-18 photographed last night 17th April 2025 from observatory Y71 Makroskooppi. The Webb telescope has detected possible #biosignature signal of dimethyl sulfide/DMS/DMDS gas in the atmosphere of the super-Earth-sized #exoplanet #K2-18b orbiting it.

    The star K2-18 is located under the constellation Leo. In this image, there is a field of view around the star about the size of the moon, the brighter star to the right of K2-18 is HIP 56079 with a brightness of 6.7mag.

  8. Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible #biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious.

    They have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide and/or dimethyl disulfide, in the #atmosphere of the #exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the #habitable zone.

    On Earth, theyare only produced by #life, primarily microbial life such as marine phytoplankton.

    #astronomy #astrobiology
    cam.ac.uk/stories/strongest-hi

  9. So far today, every news report I've read about #exoplanet K2-18b has got its size and distance wrong, and has described the #biosignature chemicals DMS and DMDS as gases (on Earth, they're both colourless, flammable liquids).

    It makes you wonder how accurate all the other stories on the news are...

    science.nasa.gov/exoplanet-cat

  10. #UniBE:
    "
    Die heissen Jupiter ziehen ihre Bahnen nicht allein
    Heisse Jupiter sind Riesenplaneten, v. denen bisher angenommen wurde, dass sie im jeweiligen Planetensystem alleine in der Nähe ihres Sterns kreisen.
    "
    ".. Planetensystem mit einer unerwarteten Architektur entdeckt: WASP-132 enthält nicht nur .. heissen Jupiter, sondern auch .. Supererde .."

    mediarelations.unibe.ch/medien

    15.1.2025

    #Astronomie #EulerTeleskop #Exoplanet #Gaia #HeisserJupiter #LaSilla #Planetologie #Supererde #TESS #WASP132

  11. Die Autorin erzählt unterhaltsam, wie sie mit der Suche nach fremdem Leben eine erfolgreiche Astrophysikerin wurde. Ihr Buch hätte aber von mehr Sorgfalt profitiert. Eine Rezension

    Die Astrophysikerin Lisa Kaltenegger beschreibt ihren Werdegang und berichtet von ihrer Forschung. Ein unterhaltsames Buch – mit Ungenauigkeiten. Eine Rezension (Rezension zu Alien Earths von Lisa Kaltenegger)#Astrophysik #Astronomie #Universum #Weltraum #Weltall #All #Physik #Biosphäre #Astrobiologie #außerirdisch #extraterrestrisch #Sonne #Planet #Exoplanet #Alien #JamesWebbTeleskop #Raumfahrt #Kosmologie #CarlSagan #HaraldLesch #StephenHawking #NeildeGrasseTyson #Kopernikus #Supernova #Milchstraße
    »Alien Earths«: An der Schwelle zu neuem Leben

  12. #Astronauts
    Landing on the #Exoplanet #Mesklin
    It sounded like he said the astronaut landed on mescalin.
    #Observer #POV

    Anyway. #thinkaboutthis @alexskolnick

    There isn't a popular #MedicalScience focused on people who had #brainDamage, experienced a #recovery, and experience #IQ on overdrive.

    It's noticeable if you haven't had that for a while. Like realizing there's no longer pain, after taking #glucosamine for a while. That-- at least-- is remarkable.

    Why is there #nothing on TV but #politics #racism and the #wealthy #rich #wealth #exhibitionists

    I put this #SpaceScience channel on. That's good. What else can I learn? Did you ever notice that? There is nothing about how to #solider or test #amperage
    Why?
    That's is #oldtechnology
    What year is the advent of the #transistor? @AceArsenault

    In retrospect, I noticed it when I was young but more interested in #guitar #wizardry than whatever they were doing on #FullHouse

    Makes sense now, in #perspective
    No wonder I never watched TV.
    #epiphany

    I want to write more about that, but I have other things to do. There's simply not enough #time

    #ineedhelp #navigating it

    Anyone?
    @Catweazle youtu.be/_SfeQa5FEVE?si=b98x1-

    #Roland #JDXi

  13. Racing for Life: K2-18b laserseti.net/racing-for-life-

    I’ve said for a while now that I view the search for technosignatures as in a race with astrobiology. I picture it like the children’s story of the race between the tortoise and the hare. Astrobiology is the tortoise, making regular progress but always painful to wait for the next instrument or discovery.

    #seti #laserseti #astrobiology #exoplanet #scicomm

  14. In case you do not remember how the #night #sky was before all the #StarLink / #SpaceX #satellites, here is one of the #timelapse I did 5 years ago from the #ESO #LaSilla #observatory, in #Chile

    The #video lasts 1 minute but it corresponds to 10 hours.

    The big dish is a decommissioned radio #telescope. In the background there is the 3.6-m telescope with its #exoplanet-hunting instrument #HARPS

    #Astronomy #Astrophotography #space

    youtube.com/watch?v=YJVKKSiIjl

    credits: A. Santerne / ESO

  15. "MPIA: Hat der Gesteins-Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c eine Atmosphäre?"

    "JWST-Beobachtungen belegen, dass TRAPPIST-1 c keine zweite Venus ist. Eine Pressemitteilung des Max-Planck-Instituts für Astronomie."

    raumfahrer.net/mpia-hat-der-ge

    #Astronomie #CO2 #Exoplanet #JamesWebbTeleskop #JWST #MIRI #MPIA #Raumfahrt #Sauerstoff #TRAPPIST1c #Weltraumteleskop

    19.6.2023

  16. 🤗🥳We are very happy to announce that Frank Eisenhauer starts as a new Director at #MPE! With #SINFONI, #GRAVITY & #GRAVITY+, Eisenhauer is building first-class instruments which led to outstanding results in #BlackHole, #GalacticCenter, #Exoplanet & #GalaxyFormation science!
    mpe.mpg.de/7948075/news2023051

  17. Asteroid belts and an image of an exoplanet around Fomalhaut:

    #JWST #Fomalhaut #Exoplanet #NASA
    photo courtesy NASA

  18. We can clearly see #airglow as well on this #photography I took from the #ESO #LaSilla #observatory, in #Chile 🇨🇱 .

    This #FullSky #picture shows the #MilkyWay crossing the #sky above the #exoplanet hunter 3.6-m #telescope, currently used now by @asmasca.

    The #orange light surrounding the sky, at the horizon, is not light pollution (there are some from the #Panamerica #highway), but #airglow.

    Credits: A. Santerne / ESO
    High-resolution available at flickr.com/photos/santerne/414

  19. A massive joint #observation campaign is in preparation.

    We are talking about a dozen high-precision #RadialVelocity instruments (blue), mounted on large (2m-10m) #telescopes + a dozen professional 1m-class #photometric telescopes (red) + hundreds of potential #citizen #scientists to observe altogether the same #exoplanet #transit...

    #StayTuned

    #astronomy #Astrodon #astrophysics #AstronomerLife #exoplanets