Astronomers Pick the Best 45 Exoplanets that might have Life

By on May 6, 2026 in Exoplanets | 0 comments

If you were given a spacecraft that could travel at light speed and get you to any other planet, where would you go? Well, astronomers picked the best 45 exoplanets out of the 6,000 that we identified. It made me wonder what these planets are like and how you measure what’s a good “fit?” Let’s take a look and learn more about how you identify a habitable world! How did we select these 45 Exoplanets? Lucky for us, we have some great telescopes orbiting Earth. One of them is a European Space Agency (ESA) telescope called Gaia. Data to select these exoplanets came from this telescope, as well as a catalog of all the other previous exoplanets discovered. For this, we use the NASA Exoplanet Archive (NEA). We have our data sources. Next, what exactly are we looking for? Exoplanets that orbit in the habitable zone (HZ) Exoplanets that have similar radiation levels to...

New Exciting NASA Telescope TESS Looks for Planets Closer to Home

By on Jul 31, 2016 in Exoplanets, NASA Missions | 0 comments

Is there life beyond Earth? A question so imperative that it has powered numerous sci-fi genres as well as historic missions like NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft. The implications of that question being answered will change the course of humanity forever. Currently, we have 2,237 confirmed planets. Meaning we have identified that many planets exist with actual observations that lie beyond our solar system. Of course, we estimate there to be at least 100 billion in our own galaxy, but observing them with our own eyes is a different story. Enter the new age of hunting for exoplanets. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite or (TESS) will usher in a new set of fresh eyes for us. Let’s take a look at what TESS is, how it’ll find these planets, and why it’s an incredibly exciting mission that will launch in 2017-2018. How does TESS work? Exoplanet hunters, like...