... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... Looking in the direction of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and launched by NASA in 2009 is the Kepler Space Observatory.Many previous missions searching for exoplanets mainly detected large giant planets, like large hot Jupiters (it is easier to detect larger planets).However KeplerтАЩs main objective is to search for much smaller planets located in a habitable zone which is not too close nor too far from their star; planets which may be just like our Earth. ...

... Explanation: This planet is only 16 light years away -- could it harbor life? ... An interesting coincidence, however, is that Gliese 832c receives just about the same average energy from its parent star as does the Earth. ... If Gliese 832c has an atmosphere like Earth, it may be a super-Earth undergoing strong seasons but capable of supporting life. ... The close 16-light year distance makes the Gliese 832 planetary system currently the nearest to Earth that could potentially support life. ...

... 2014 July 9 . Gliese 832c: The Closest Potentially Habitable Exoplanet . ... Recently discovered exoplanet Gliese 832c has been found in a close orbit around a star that is less bright than our Sun. ... If Gliese 832c has an atmosphere like Earth, it may be a super-Earth undergoing strong seasons but capable of supporting life. ... The close 16-light year distance makes the Gliese 832 planetary system currently the nearest to Earth that could potentially support life. ... About APOD | ...

... The discovery of giant Jupiter-type planets in a close proximity to 51 Peg, Boo, and And has prompted the question of where the planets could be formed in the circumstellar disks of solar-type stars. ... Planet formation, at distance of ~0.05 AU from the star, requires that the temperature of the circumstellar protoplanetary disk is low enough for the condensation of rocky materials, and the surface density is sufficiently high. ...

Asteroid 2004 MN4 was discovered on the 19th of June 2004 by Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the University of Hawaii Asteroid Survey from Kitt Peak Arizona. ... After a few days it was recognized that it would make several close approaches to Earth in the 21st century. ... These distances were calculated by the Near Earth Object Dynamic Site using data available up to 2005 February, to check for updates go to Near Earth Object Dynamic Site . ... PHA Close Approaches To The Earth . ...

... Over the past decade and a half, astronomers have used both ground-based and space-based telescopes to discover more than 400 "extrasolar" planets. The Kepler space-based mission uses a technique called transit photometry to search for these planets. In January 2010 the Kepler mission team announced the discovery of five new planets. ... The ultimate goal of the Kepler mission is to search out the existence of Earth-like planets. ... A Collection of Resources to Get Behind the Headlines . ...

... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

... Galileo Probe . The Galileo spacecraft was designed to study Jupiter's atmosphere, satellites, and surrounding magnetosphere for two years. ... From there, Galileo will spend more than five years traveling to Jupiter, where it will become the first spacecraft to make direct measurements from an instrumented probe within Jupiter's atmosphere. ... This image, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the predicted site at which the Galileo Probe will enter Jupiter's atmosphere on December 7, 1995. ...

... Jupiter's big moon Ganymede is not only the size of a planet -- it sounds like one too, as heard in audio recordings made from data returned by NASA's Galileo spacecraft released today. ... Characterized by a soaring whistle and hissing static, Ganymede's song reveals that the Solar System's largest moon is also the only one known to possess a planet-like, self-generated magnetic cocoon called a magnetosphere , which shields the moon from the magnetic influence of its giant parent body, Jupiter. ...

... The study of extra solar planets will be one of the most important areas of research in astronomy in this century. ... The first planets outside the solar system were found in 1992 around the millisecond pulsar PSR B1257+12 by Alex Wolszczan at the Arecibo Observatory . ... Three space missions based on this principle (MOST, COROT and Kepler ) have already been launched or approved, and have the last one at least has the potential to find Earth-sized planets. ... SIM ( NASA ) is one of such missions...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The Nine Planets . ... It isn't the first extrasolar planetary system to be discovered; the first planet outside our own solar system orbiting a normal Sunlike star was discovered in 1995. ... Still, this is the first solar system ever found besides our own to definitely have more than one planet. This is an important discovery: most people all along have been assuming that multiple planet systems exist, but we had never actually seen one. ...

Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . This page is devoted to information on Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . Basic information on this SN, including the last reported brightness, on this Supe