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Seven terrestrial exoplanets around a nearby star
An international team of astronomers has discovered a compact analogue of our inner solar system about 40 light-years away. Brice-Olivier Demory of the Center of Space and Habitability at the University of Bern, analysed the data collected with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and calculated that the newly detected exoplanets all have masses less or similar […]
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10 times denser than gold
An international team of astronomers led by Dan Bayliss of the Observatory of the University of Geneva and member of PlanetS discovered a brown dwarf, an object that is neither a star nor a planet, with a density never seen before. Ten times denser than gold! The measured density of the brown dwarf EPIC201702477b is […]
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It’s confirmed, Proxima b has three suns
A team of astronomers including Christophe Lovis, member of PlanetS, confirmed in a press release distributed by ESO that Proxima is gravitationally bound to its neighbors Alpha Centauri A and B. Since the discovery of Proxima in 1915 its proximity in the sky with Alpha Centauri and the similarity of their distance to the Sun […]
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How taxpayers benefit
Click on “next” to see the first/next question. Click on the images to find out what she/he answers. The interviews were first published in the magazine “Schweizer Familie”, No. 41/2016.
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Kepler-60
Kepler-60 is a system about 2200 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. It is made of a star a bit larger than the Sun (1.1 solar masses and 1.5 solar radii) and at least three planets. This system is peculiar since the three planets seems to be close to a Laplace-like resonance. Indeed, when the central planet (Kepler-60 c) revolves 4 times around the […]
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Preferentially Earth-sized planets with lots of water
Computer simulations by astrophysicists at the University of Bern of the formation of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of low mass stars such as Proxima Centauri show that these planets are most likely to be roughly the size of the Earth and to contain large amounts of water. In August 2016, the announcement of […]
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“As a child I wanted to be an astronaut”
Hilke Schlichting, Professor at MIT/UCLA, came to NCCR PlanetS as Visiting Scholar for two weeks in September 2016. The Visiting Scholars’ programme invites prominent senior scientists in the field to give scientific seminars and, in addition, to share their experience with young researchers at PlanetS. Hilke Schlichting’s research interests span all aspects of planet formation […]
Continue ReadingNCCR PlanetS: Business cards
The communication platform has received several requests for NCCR business cards. Therefore, we have prepared an order form with the templates below. Your order will be sent to the printer, as soon as we have received enough orders (therefore might take longer to produce). Please inform us, if your order is urgent. Any expenses related […]
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47UMa
47UMa, G1V, mv=5.03 47 Ursae Majoris (in short 47 UMa) is a 6-billion-year-old system 46 light-years away. The star, also named Chalawan, is similar to the Sun and can be seen with the naked eye between the Big Dipper / Plough and Leo Minor. The masses and distances to the star of the two innermost […]
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Water in the atmosphere of Kappa And b
New estimate of the water abundance in a planetary mass object spatially resolved from its host star. Dr. Kamen Todorov of ETH led a team that modelled the spectrum of Kappa And b. We hope to coordinate our efforts in this area through the NCCR PlanetS and apply similar techniques to other directly imaged planets. […]
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