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…
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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.