drew@drewexmachina.com
The news this week has been filled with stories about Kepler reaching its milestone of 1,000 confirmed planetary discoveries with eight of those newfound planets advertised […]
NASA’s Kepler mission has now reached a new milestone with 1,000 confirmed planets to its credit. In addition, another 554 candidate planets requiring follow-up study have […]
One of the primary motivations of NASA’s Kepler mission was to find Earth-size planets in Earth-like orbits around Sun-like stars by observing the transits of these […]
The planets in our solar system are rather neatly grouped into two broad categories: relatively small rocky terrestrial planets and large non-rocky gas giants. With the […]
According to an old adage, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. For some time now, it has been claimed that a […]
Among the lay public, probably one of the most misunderstood astronomical terms that has recently come into common use has to be “super-Earth”. All too often, […]
During the past few days, word has started to spread about the latest study that has resulted in the “disappearance” of a pair of planets that […]
I readily admit that one of my pet peeves going back almost 20 years to the discovery of the first extrasolar planets has been overblown claims […]
Earlier this week, the discovery of a pair of planets orbiting the nearby Kapteyn’s Star was announced [1, 2]. While such announcements go largely unnoticed nowadays […]
Six years ago the discovery of the fifth planet known to orbit 55 Cancri A (abbreviated 55 Cnc A and also known as ρ1 Cancri A) […]
The announcement of the discovery of an Earth-sized planet orbiting inside the habitable zone of the distant red dwarf star designated Kepler 186 has resulted in […]
In the just-published April 2014 issue of Sky & Telescope is an article detailing the results announced at the January American Astronomical Society meeting on some […]
