NASA’s Kepler Mission has released 43 days of science data on more than 156,000 stars.

 

Thousands of new exoplanets may need a new naming system. With so many potential new exoplanets that will likely be discovered maybe it is time to revamp the system of naming planets so it is less confusing.

 

 

Source: Space.com – click here for full article

 

 

Nov. 13, 2008: NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has taken the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star. Estimated to be no more than three times Jupiter’s mass, the planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the bright southern star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, or the “Southern Fish.”

Fomalhaut has been a candidate for planet hunting ever since an excess of dust (a telltale sign of planet formation) was discovered around the star in the early 1980s by NASA’s Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS.

In 2004, the coronagraph in the High Resolution Camera on Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys produced the first-ever resolved visible-light image of the region around Fomalhaut. (Note: A coronagraph is a device that can block the bright light of a central star to reveal faint objects around it.) It clearly showed a ring of protoplanetary debris approximately 21.5 billion miles across and having a sharp inner edge.

Source: Nasa Science – click here or title for full article