Cheops reveals a rugby ball-shaped exoplanet
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:57 More than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered to date, but what do they look like? ESA’s dedicated exoplanet missions Cheops, Plato and Ariel are on a quest to find out. Cheops will focus its search on mini-Neptunes, planets with sizes between Earth and Neptune, on short orbits around their stars. Cheops will find out how large these planets are, and may detect whether the planets have clouds. Plato will look at all kinds of exoplanets and determine their sizes and ages. Plato’s instruments are so sensitive it may discover the first Earth-like planet on an Earth-like orbit. Finally, Ariel will look at the atmospheres of exoplanets using the technique of transmission spectroscopy and discover what they are made of. Together these missions will discover what exoplanets and their systems look like and they will also reveal how special our own Solar System is.
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By European Space Agency
During a break from looking at planets around other stars, ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.
The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?
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By European Space Agency
Researchers have confirmed the presence of an exoplanet, a planet that orbits another star, using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. Formally classified as LHS 475 b, the planet is almost exactly the same size as our own, clocking in at 99% of Earth’s diameter.
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By European Space Agency
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope just scored another first: a molecular and chemical portrait of a distant world’s skies. While Webb and other space telescopes, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, have previously revealed isolated ingredients of this heated planet’s atmosphere, the new readings provide a full menu of atoms, molecules, and even signs of active chemistry and clouds. The latest data also give a hint of how these clouds might look up close: broken up rather than as a single, uniform blanket over the planet.
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