The heart of a far-off star beats for its planet
For the first time, astronomers from MIT and elsewhere have observed a star pulsing in response to its orbiting planet.The star, which goes by the name HAT-P-2, is about 400 light years from Earth and...
View ArticleMedia Lab sets sights on space
Amid a recent resurgence of interest and investment in space, the MIT Media Lab is setting up a new initiative to explore the possibilities. And, its students were the impetus. “It started over last...
View ArticleAnother potentially habitable extrasolar planet discovered
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, scientists could only postulate at the existence of planets orbiting other suns. Today, the race is on to find the first with signs of life, and it's hot.With so...
View ArticleTESS mission to discover new planets moves toward launch
A NASA mission designed to explore the stars in search of planets outside of our solar system is a step closer to launch, now that its four cameras have been completed by researchers at MIT.The...
View ArticleCitizen scientists discover five tightly packed exoplanets
Five new planets have been discovered outside our solar system, all orbiting a sun-like star located within the constellation Aquarius, nearly 620 light years from Earth. The alien worlds are...
View ArticleEAPS welcomes Heising-Simons fellow Ian Wong
The Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) is looking forward to welcoming planetary scientist Ian Wong, one of the 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellows for 2018 announced this week...
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TESS readies for takeoff
There are potentially thousands of planets that lie just outside our solar system — galactic neighbors that could be rocky worlds or more tenuous collections of gas and dust. Where are these closest...
View ArticleUshering in the next phase of exoplanet discovery
Ever since scientists discovered the first planet outside of our solar system, 51 Pegasi b, the astronomical field of exoplanets has exploded, thanks in large part to the Kepler Space Telescope. Now,...
View ArticleTESS takes initial test image
The following is adapted from a press release issued today by MIT and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.NASA’s next planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), is one step closer...
View ArticleTiny ASTERIA satellite achieves a first for CubeSats
A miniature satellite called ASTERIA (Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics) has measured the transit of a previously-discovered super-Earth exoplanet, 55 Cancri e. This finding...
View ArticleJulien de Wit and TRAPPIST-1 science team receive NASA award
NASA has recognized the science team behind the discovery of a distant planetary system with a Group Achievement Award. The award, given by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), cites the team for...
View ArticleJacqueline Hewitt to step down as director of the MIT Kavli Institute
Jacqueline Hewitt, the Julius A. Stratton Professor in Electrical Engineering and Physics, will step down as director of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, effective Jan. 16,...
View ArticleRobert Simcoe named director of MIT Kavli Institute
The School of Science has announced that Robert Simcoe, the Francis L. Friedman Professor of Physics, will be the new director of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI). Simcoe...
View ArticleLighting up exoplanets
Ever since the discovery of the first exoplanet, 51 Pegasi b, hidden within the well-known Pegasus constellation in 1995, the burgeoning field of exoplanetary astronomy has taken off. Since then, the...
View ArticleTESS discovers its first Earth-sized planet
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, has discovered its first Earth-sized exoplanet. The planet, named HD 21749c, is the smallest world outside our solar system that TESS has identified...
View Article3Q: Julien de Wit on searching for red worlds in the northern skies
With a new telescope situated on a scenic plateau in Tenerife, Spain, MIT planetary scientists now have an added way to search for Earth-sized exoplanets. Artemis, the first ground-based telescope of...
View ArticleThe music of the spheres
Space has long fascinated poets, physicists, astronomers, and science fiction writers. Musicians, too, have often found beauty and meaning in the skies above. At MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, a group of...
View ArticleTESS team is awarded NASA's Silver Achievement Medal
On Sept. 5, NASA awarded a Silver Achievement Medal to the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) team. The award was presented during a ceremony at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as part...
View ArticleComputing and the search for new planets
When MIT launched the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing this fall, one of the goals was to drive further innovation in computing across all of MIT’s schools. Researchers are already...
View ArticleLincoln Laboratory welcomes Natalia Guerrero for Hispanic Heritage Month event
How unique is our solar system? This is a question that scientists have been trying to answer for a long time. It is also the question that Natalia Guerrero posed during her keynote address at MIT...
View ArticleCharlotte Minsky and Lyndie Mitchell Zollinger named 2020 Gates Cambridge...
MIT seniors Charlotte Minsky and Lyndie Mitchell Zollinger have won the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their...
View ArticleMeet the MIT bilinguals: Dual history and planetary science major Charlotte...
“I wasn’t someone who grew up thinking of MIT as my dream school. But, at the end of the day I knew I couldn’t say no to MIT.” It was not a lack of enthusiasm or appreciation for MIT that Charlotte...
View ArticleStudy: Life might survive, and thrive, in a hydrogen world
As new and more powerful telescopes blink on in the next few years, astronomers will be able to aim the megascopes at nearby exoplanets, peering into their atmospheres to decipher their composition and...
View ArticleCitizen scientists spot closest young brown dwarf disk yet
Brown dwarfs are the middle child of astronomy, too big to be a planet yet not big enough to be a star. Like their stellar siblings, these objects form from the gravitational collapse of gas and dust....
View ArticleTESS mission discovers massive ice giant
The “ice giant” planets Neptune and Uranus are much less dense than rocky, terrestrial planets such as Venus and Earth. Beyond our solar system, many other Neptune-sized planets, orbiting distant...
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Study: A plunge in incoming sunlight may have triggered “Snowball Earths”
At least twice in Earth’s history, nearly the entire planet was encased in a sheet of snow and ice. These dramatic “Snowball Earth” events occurred in quick succession, somewhere around 700 million...
View ArticleLava oceans may not explain the brightness of some hot super-Earths
Arguably some of the weirdest, most extreme planets among the more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered to date are the hot super-Earths — rocky, flaming-hot worlds that zing so precariously close to their...
View ArticleAstronomers discover an Earth-sized “pi planet” with a 3.14-day orbit
In a delightful alignment of astronomy and mathematics, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a “pi Earth” — an Earth-sized planet that zips around its star every 3.14 days, in an orbit...
View ArticleProfessor and astrophysicist Sara Seager appointed officer to the Order of...
MIT’s Class of 1941 Professor of Planetary Sciences Sara Seager has been named an officer of the Order of Canada, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. Announced by the governor general of...
View ArticleTESS discovers four exoplanets orbiting a nearby sun-like star
MIT researchers have discovered four new exoplanets orbiting a sun-like star just over 200 light-years from Earth. Because of the diversity of these planets and brightness of their star, this system...
View ArticleResearch updates from TESS: Hunting for worlds beyond our solar system
At the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) held last month, MIT researchers presented new data from programs such as the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). In a...
View ArticleTESS Science Conference II draws nearly 700 virtual attendees
On glowing screens in 41 countries across the world, over 680 people logged on to the second TESS Science Conference from Aug. 2-6. Experts not only in exoplanets, but also in extragalactic astronomy,...
View ArticleAstronomers detect signs of an atmosphere stripped from a planet during giant...
Young planetary systems generally experience extreme growing pains, as infant bodies collide and fuse to form progressively larger planets. In our own solar system, the Earth and moon are thought to be...
View ArticleOne year on this giant, blistering hot planet is just 16 hours long
The hunt for planets beyond our solar system has turned up more than 4,000 far-flung worlds, orbiting stars thousands of light years from Earth. These extrasolar planets are a veritable menagerie,...
View ArticleTESS discovers a planet the size of Mars but with the makeup of Mercury
Ultra-short-period planets are small, compact worlds that whip around their stars at close range, completing an orbit — and a single, scorching year — in less than 24 hours. How these planets came to...
View ArticleTESS Science Office at MIT hits milestone of 5,000 exoplanet candidates
The catalog of planet candidates found with NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) recently passed 5,000 TOIs, or TESS Objects of Interest.The catalog has been growing steadily since the...
View ArticleA “hot Jupiter’s” dark side is revealed in detail for first time
MIT astronomers have obtained the clearest view yet of the perpetual dark side of an exoplanet that is “tidally locked” to its star. Their observations, combined with measurements of the planet’s...
View ArticleLook! Up in the sky! Is it a planet? Nope, just a star
The first worlds beyond our solar system were discovered three decades ago. Since then, close to 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy. Astronomers have detected another 5,000 planetary...
View ArticleMIT welcomes two from the Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellowship...
MIT’s School of Science welcomes postdocs Malena Rice and Eva Scheller, recipients of the 2022 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 31 by the Heising-Simons Foundation.The 51 Pegasi...
View ArticleAstronomers discover a multiplanet system nearby
Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a new multiplanet system within our galactic neighborhood that lies just 10 parsecs, or about 33 light-years, from Earth, making it one of the closest...
View ArticleStudy: Astronomers risk misinterpreting planetary signals in JWST data
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is revealing the universe with spectacular, unprecedented clarity. The observatory’s ultrasharp infrared vision has cut through the cosmic dust to illuminate...
View ArticleDocumentary featuring Professor Sara Seager wins Emmy Award
A number of MIT affiliates featured prominently at the 43rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards presented by The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences — including a winner of the Emmy...
View ArticleEarth can regulate its own temperature over millennia, new study finds
The Earth’s climate has undergone some big changes, from global volcanism to planet-cooling ice ages and dramatic shifts in solar radiation. And yet life, for the last 3.7 billion years, has kept on...
View ArticleSchool of Science appoints 10 faculty to named professorships
The School of Science has announced that 10 of its faculty members have been appointed to named professorships. The faculty members selected for these positions receive additional support to pursue...
View ArticlePlanet hunting and the origins of life
George Ricker built his first telescope when he was in third grade. Growing up in rural Florida, with its abundance of dark night skies, facilitated his natural propensity for stargazing. But it was in...
View ArticleMIT welcomes 2023 Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellow Juliana...
MIT’s School of Science welcomes Juliana García-Mejía, one of eight recipients of the 2023 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. The announcement was made March 30 by the Heising-Simons Foundation.The 51 Pegasi b...
View ArticleIn a first, astronomers spot a star swallowing a planet
As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter — and planets — in its wake. Scientists have observed hints of stars just before, and shortly...
View ArticleA telescope’s last view
More than 5,000 planets are confirmed to exist beyond our solar system. Over half were discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, a resilient observatory that far outlasted its original planned...
View ArticleNewly discovered planet has longest orbit yet detected by the TESS mission
Of the more than 5,000 planets known to exist beyond our solar system, most orbit their stars at surprisingly close range. More than 80 percent of confirmed exoplanets have orbits shorter than 50 days,...
View ArticleA carbon-lite atmosphere could be a sign of water and life on other...
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers’ best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the...
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