Discover the cosmos! ... 2009 September 23 . CoRoT Satellite Discovers Rocky Planet . ... Explanation: How similar is exoplanet CoRoT-7b to Earth? ... Also, the home star to CoRoT-7b , although 500 light years distant, is very similar to our Sun. Unfortunately, the similarities likely end there, as CoRoT-7b orbits its home star well inside the orbit of Mercury , making its year last only 20 hours, and making its peak temperature much hotter than humans might find comfortable. ... About APOD | ...

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... The newly discovered ?mega-Earth? ... Its sibling, the lava world Kepler-10b, is in the background (the two planets? proximity is grossly exaggerated) .€а Kepler-10c has a diameter of about 29 000 km, 2.3 times as large as Earth, and weighs 17 times as much. ... The first mega-earth to be discovered is Kepler-10c which orbits a star lying about 560 light years from the Sun in the constellation Draco. ... Astronomers Find a New Type of Planet: The ?Mega-Earth? ...

... Credit Copyright: Greg Bacon ( STScI ), NASA Explanation: The last decade saw the profound discovery of many worlds beyond our solar system, but none analogs of our home planet Earth . ... Less massive planets must certainly exist, and yesterday preeminent planet-finders announced the further detection of two more new worlds -- each a potentially smaller, saturn-sized planet. ... Publications with keywords: extrasolar planet - planet - Saturn - planetary system . ... In the Shadow of Saturns Rings ....

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . Asteroid 2010 SO16 and the Earth follow similar orbits around . the Sun. ... out a horseshoe shape in space, taking 175 years to go from . ... Asteroid 2010 SO16 takes 175 years to make the trip from one end of the horseshoe to the other. ... Currently, three other horseshoe companions of the Earth are known to exist but, unlike 2010 SO16, these linger for a few thousand years at most before moving on to different orbits. ...

... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomers recently discovered that Scholz's star passed close to the Sun 70,000 years ago. Wouldn't its gravity have sent Oort Cloud comets raining into the inner planets? ... COMETS | OORT CLOUD . Based on the number of long-period comets that enter the inner solar system, astronomers estimate there are probably trillions of them in the Oort Cloud. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Discover | ...

Discover the cosmos! ... December 6, 1999 . M83: The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy from VLT . ... Explanation: M83 is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies on the sky. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hydra , majestic spiral arms have prompted its nickname as the Southern Pinwheel. Although discovered 250 years ago, only in this century was it appreciated that M83 was not a gas cloud but a barred spiral galaxy much like our own Milky Way Galaxy . ... About APOD > . ...

... When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by the planet Uranus in January 1986, astronomers were treated to their first close-up glimpse of the satellites that orbit the seventh planet. ... But by far the most intriguing of those 15 satellites was a jigsaw-puzzle world called Miranda . ... How dark was it at Miranda? One of the Voyager scientists put it this way: Taking pictures in the Uranus system is like trying to do photography in a ballpark at night when the only light comes from a single candle. ...

... Astronomers have found a planet the size of Earth just outside of our Solar System, orbiting around our nearest star! ... More than 800 planets have now been found outside our Solar System, we call them 'exo-planets . ... While the newly discovered exo-planet is similar to the Earth in size, it is much closer to its star than our planet. ... A year on the exo-planet would be just three days long (this is how long it takes the planet to complete one orbit of its star). ...

A team of U.S. and German astrophysicists have made the first ever detection of X-rays coming from a comet. ... Following the initial detection, the team reported repeated X-ray emissions from the comet over the next 24 hours. ... One preliminary theory is that X-ray emission from the Sun was absorbed by a cloud of gaseous water molecules surrounding the nucleus of the comet, and then were re-emitted by the molecules in a process physicists call "fluorescence." ... Comets . ...

... 9a. Earth orbits Sun? . ... 10a. Scale of Solar Sys. ... If the mean distance of Earth from the Sun is 1 AU ("Astronomical Unit"), then that of Venus is 0.723 AU, of Mercury 0.387 AU and that of Mars is 1.524 AU. ... By noting (1) where on the Sun's disk is the crossing seen, (2) timing its duration at two far-apart points on Earth, and (3) comparing the times, one can calculate the distance to Venus and from it the scale of the solar system. ... One occurred in 1639--too early. ...

Geotimes -- November 2005 -- Two more moons for "planet" Pluto http://www.geotimes.org/nov05/WebExtra110305.html Web Extra Thursday, November 3, 2005 Two more moons for Pluto When the New Horizons spacecraft finally reaches Pluto in July 2015, researchers will have more objects to study than previously thought. In addition to Pluto's confirmed moon Charon, astronomers have detected two more orbiting celestial bodies, which could help reveal how the planet and moon system formed. ...