In July I spent four exciting days at the Institut de Planetologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG). Set in a picturesque green valley in the Alps where the rivers Drac and Ilsere merge, this scenic little town in Southern France is well-known for planet hunters. The Grenoble group I visited is one of the world…
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Saturn’s Super Storm
If you live in the US, you will remember the great February snowstorm of 2010 – which entered history as “Snowmageddon” – that covered the East Coast in thick snow and paralyzed cities and airports. It was one of the largest winter storms in recent history. Yet, the same year in the outer solar system…
Exoplanets in the UA Daily Wildcat
The University of Arizona’s Daily Wildcat has published a nice article by Zane Johnson on our work on rotational mapping of brown dwarfs and exoplanets. It was fun talking to Zane. Good luck with the new science desk at the Wildcat!
How to Get Your Own Exoplanet?
If you have been reading about exoplanets, you know that they all have boring names, such as GJ 876b, 51 Peg b, or WASP-19b (not to speak about the likes of KOI-762.02). Up to a few days ago the official names of exoplanets had to be the catalog identifier of their host star plus a…
The Wildest Clouds in The Universe
Flying on a Delta MD90 jet on my way back from Munich, Germany to Tucson among gorgeous towering clouds glowing in exotic shades of yellow, orange, and purple. Amazing view – especially interesting is the all the different clouds we see are made of water. How would clouds on exotic other planets look? Earth is…
The Coolest Exoplanet Imaged – The Discovery of GJ 504b
Exciting news for planet hunters: Working with the 8m Subaru telescope at Mauna Kea the international SEEDS team announced the exciting discovery of a new directly imaged planet – this new planet is exciting not only because very few planets have been directly imaged yet, but also because this one is different from all others…
The Substellar Zoo: From Brown Dwarfs to Super-Earths
I particularly like Frost’s illustration from 1846 which shows how planetary systems were thought to look like in a post-Newtonian universe: in essence, Frost’s universe is filled with copies of the solar system – planets orbit each star. Interestingly, 130 years later the Star Wars universe was not that different: the desert planet Tatooine, the…
Proto-blog
I am working on setting up the Distant Earths blog. You will find here news and views on the search for life beyond the solar system, extrasolar planets, and astrobiology.