Exoplanets articles within Nature

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  • Books & Arts |

    Barbara Kiser reviews five of the week's best science picks.

    • Barbara Kiser

  • News & Views |

    The nature of exoplanetary atmospheres is hotly debated. The thermal spectrum of an exoplanet called a hot Jupiter reveals the presence of an analogue of Earth's ozone layer, although its composition is unknown. See Letter p.58

    • Kevin Heng

  • Letter |

    Observations of the gas-giant exoplanet WASP-121b reveal near-infrared emission lines of water, suggesting that the planet has a stratosphere—a layer in the upper atmosphere where temperature increases with altitude.

    • Thomas M. Evans
    • , David K. Sing
    •  & Roxana Lupu

  • Letter |

    In an analysis of a large sample of microlensing events, a few suggest the existence of Earth-mass free-floating planets, but only the expected number of Jupiter-mass free-floating objects were detected.

    • Przemek Mróz
    • , Andrzej Udalski
    •  & Michał Pawlak

  • Letter |

    An Earth-sized planet is observed orbiting a nearby star within the liquid-water, habitable zone, the atmospheric composition of which could be determined from future observations.

    • Jason A. Dittmann
    • , Jonathan M. Irwin
    •  & Courtney D. Dressing

  • News & Views |

    Seven small planets whose surfaces could harbour liquid water have been spotted around a nearby dwarf star. If such a configuration is common in planetary systems, our Galaxy could be teeming with Earth-like planets. See Letter p.456

    • Ignas A. G. Snellen

  • Letter |

    Last year, three Earth-sized planets were discovered to be orbiting the nearby Jupiter-sized star TRAPPIST-1; now, follow-up photometric observations from the ground and from space show that there are at least seven Earth-sized planets in this star system, and that they might be the right temperature to harbour liquid water on their surfaces.

    • Michaël Gillon
    • , Amaury H. M. J. Triaud
    •  & Didier Queloz

  • News & Views |

    The origin of hot Jupiters, large gaseous planets in close orbits around stars, is unknown. Observations suggest that such planets are abundant in stellar clusters, and can result from encounters with other celestial bodies.

    • Amaury Triaud

  • News & Views |

    An Earth-mass planet has been discovered in orbit around Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Sun. The planet orbits at a distance from the star such that liquid water and potentially life could exist on its surface. See Letter p.437

    • Artie P. Hatzes

  • Letter |

    The snow-line is the distance from a protostar at which a particular volatile gas condenses; images of the protostar V883 Ori suggest that the water snow-line migrated outwards during a protostellar outburst, with implications for our understanding of the formation of planetary systems such as our own.

    • Lucas A. Cieza
    • , Simon Casassus
    •  & Alice Zurlo

  • Letter |

    The radial velocities of a young star are measured, revealing the presence of a planet of mass about three-quarters that of Jupiter, orbiting its host star very closely, and thus demonstrating that ‘hot Jupiters’ can migrate inwards in less than two million years.

    • J. F. Donati
    • , C. Moutou
    •  & A. Collier Cameron

  • Letter |

    Transit timing variations of the four-planet system Kepler-223 are used to compute the long-term stability of the system, which has a chain of resonances; the results suggest that inward planetary migration, rather than in situ assembly, is responsible for the formation of some close-in sub-Neptune systems.

    • Sean M. Mills
    • , Daniel C. Fabrycky
    •  & Howard Isaacson

  • Letter |

    Three Earth-sized planets—receiving similar irradiation to Venus and Earth, and ideally suited for atmospheric study—have been found transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star that has a mass of only eight per cent of that of the Sun.

    • Michaël Gillon
    • , Emmanuël Jehin
    •  & Didier Queloz

  • Editorial |

    Findings from the Akatsuki mission should rekindle interest in Earth’s closest neighbour.

  • Letter |

    A longitudinal thermal brightness map of the super-Earth exoplanet 55 Cancri e reveals strong day–night temperature contrast, indicating inefficient heat redistribution consistent with 55 Cancri e either being devoid of atmosphere or having an optically thick atmosphere with heat recirculation confined to the planetary dayside.

    • Brice-Olivier Demory
    • , Michael Gillon
    •  & Didier Queloz

  • News & Views |

    Planets develop from the disk of dust and gas that surrounds a newly formed star. Observations of gaps in the disks of four such systems have allowed us to start unravelling the processes by which planets form.

    • Paul Ho

  • Letter |

    A spectroscopic comparison of ten hot-Jupiter exoplanets reveals that the difference between the planetary radius measured at optical and infrared wavelengths allows atmosphere types ranging from clear to cloudy to be distinguished; the difference in radius at a given wavelength correlates with the spectral strength of water at that wavelength, suggesting that haze obscures the signal from water.

    • David K. Sing
    • , Jonathan J. Fortney
    •  & Paul A. Wilson

  • News & Views |

    Thousands of extrasolar planets have been discovered, but none is a planet in its infancy. Observations have finally been made of a young planet growing in its birthplace — opening the way to many more such discoveries. See Letter p.342

    • Zhaohuan Zhu

  • Letter |

    Transition disks are natural laboratories for the study of planet formation, with inner clearings explained by the influence of accreting planets, but attempts to observe directly accretion onto protoplanets have proven unsuccessful so far; here the authors detect infrared emission from multiple companions of the LkCa 15 system and Ha emission from the innermost (LkCa 15 b), showing hot (~10,000 K) gas falling deep into the potential well of an accreting protoplanet.

    • S. Sallum
    • , K. B. Follette
    •  & A. J. Weinberger

  • News & Views |

    A rocky planet close in size to Earth has been discovered in the cosmic vicinity of our Sun. The small size and proximity of the associated star bode well for studies of the planet's atmosphere. See Letter p.204

    • Drake Deming

  • Letter |

    A low-mass star that is just 12 parsecs away from Earth is shown to be transited by an Earth-sized planet, GJ 1132b, which probably has a rock/iron composition and might support a substantial atmosphere.

    • Zachory K. Berta-Thompson
    • , Jonathan Irwin
    •  & Anaël Wünsche

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of data from the Kepler space observatory and ground-based telescopes has led to the detection of one, and possibly several, minor planets that are in a state of disintegration in orbit around a white dwarf star. See Letter p.546

    • Francesca Faedi

  • Letter |

    The atmospheres of white dwarfs often contain elements heavier than helium, even though these elements would be expected to settle into the stars’ interiors; observations of the white dwarf WD 1145+017 suggest that disintegrating rocky bodies are orbiting the star, perhaps contributing heavy elements to its atmosphere.

    • Andrew Vanderburg
    • , John Asher Johnson
    •  & Jason T. Wright

  • Letter |

    High-contrast imaging of the nearby, young, active late-type star AU Microscopii reveals five mysterious large-scale features in the southeast side of its debris disk, moving away from the star.

    • Anthony Boccaletti
    • , Christian Thalmann
    •  & John Wisniewski

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of Kepler data has yielded the smallest known mass for an exoplanet orbiting a normal star. Its mass and size are similar to those of Mars, setting a benchmark for the properties of exoplanets smaller than Earth. See Letter p.321

    • Gregory Laughlin

  • News & Views |

    Researchers have found a mechanism that prevents newly forming giant-planet cores from spiralling in towards their parent stars. The result may explain why planets such as Saturn and Jupiter are where they are today. See Letter p.63

    • Martin J. Duncan

  • Letter |

    Modelling of planetary formation reveals that asymmetries in the temperature rise associated with accretion produce a torque that counteracts inward migration, suggesting how the conditions for giant-planet formation may arise.

    • Pablo Benítez-Llambay
    • , Frédéric Masset
    •  & Judit Szulágyi

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