News
News
Puffy Planets Lose Atmospheres, Become Super-Earths
Finding Represents First Detections of Atmospheric Loss in “Mini-Neptunes” Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have identified two different cases of “mini-Neptune” planets that are losing their puffy atmospheres and likely transforming into super-Earths. Radiation from the planets’ stars is stripping away their atmospheres, driving hot gas to escape like steam from a pot of boiling water. […]
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Newly-Found Planets On The Edge Of Destruction
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Three newly-discovered planets have been orbiting dangerously close to stars nearing the end of their lives. Out of the thousands of extrasolar planets found so far, these three gas giant planets first detected by the NASA TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) Mission, have some of the shortest-period orbits around subgiant or giant […]
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Astronomers Witness a Dying Star Reach Its Explosive End
Two Hawai’i Telescopes Capture a Massive Star Moments Before Going Supernova Haleakalā and Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – For the very first time, astronomers have imaged in real time the dramatic end to a red supergiant’s life, watching the massive star’s rapid self-destruction and final death throes before it collapsed into a Type II supernova. Using two […]
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Rocky Exoplanets Are Even Stranger Than We Thought
A New Astrogeology Study Suggests That Most Nearby Rocky Exoplanets Are Quite Unlike Anything in Our Solar System Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars in our galaxy – known as exoplanets. However, it’s difficult to know what exactly these planets are made of, or whether any resemble Earth. To try to […]
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Infant Planet Discovered by UH-Led Team Using Maunakea Telescopes
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – One of the youngest planets ever found around a distant infant star has been discovered by an international team of scientists led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa faculty, students, and alumni. Thousands of planets have been discovered around other stars, but what sets this one apart is that it is newly-formed […]
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A Crystal Ball Into Our Solar System’s Future
Giant Gas Planet Orbiting a Dead Star Gives Glimpse Into the Predicted Aftermath of our Sun’s Demise Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have discovered the very first confirmed planetary system that resembles the expected fate of our solar system, when the Sun reaches the end of its life in about five billion years. The researchers detected the […]
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A Black Hole Triggers a Premature Supernova
The first observation of a brand-new kind of supernova had been predicted by theorists but never before confirmed Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – In 2017, a particularly luminous and unusual source of radio waves was discovered in data taken by the Very Large Array (VLA) Sky Survey, a project that scans the night sky in radio wavelengths. […]
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Observatories Assemble: NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Joins W. M. Keck Observatory and Japan’s Hisaki Satellite to Solve “Energy Crisis” on Jupiter
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Sitting more than five times the distance from the Sun as Earth, Jupiter is not expected to be particularly warm. Based on the amount of sunlight received, the average temperature in the planet’s upper atmosphere should be about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit or a chilly minus 73 Celsius. Instead, the measured value […]
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Astronomers Probe Layer-Cake Structure of Brown Dwarf’s Atmosphere
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Jupiter may be the bully planet of our solar system because it’s the most massive planet, but it’s actually a runt compared to many of the giant planets found around other stars. These alien worlds, called super-Jupiters, weigh up to 13 times Jupiter’s mass. Astronomers have analyzed the composition of some of […]
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HR 8799 Super-Jupiters’ Days Measured for the First Time, Gives a New Spin on Unraveling Planet Formation Mystery
W. M. Keck Observatory Planet Imager and Characterizer Instrument Delivers First Science, Capturing Spin Measurements of HR 8799 Exoplanets Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have captured the first-ever spin measurements of HR 8799, the famed system that made history as the very first exoplanetary system to have its image taken. Discovered in 2008 by two Maunakea […]
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