Understanding exoplanet evolution could help solve the mystery of the 'hot Neptune desert.' As astronomers delve deeper into ...

Scientists are using an array of instruments to detect other planets, some of which may harbor life—and others that most ...

"There really is something very different about how these giant planets form versus how small planets like Earth form." ...

Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets—almost half of the total—in its almost 10 years of operation. However ...

It found plenty, but some discoveries were easier to verify than others, and the very first exoplanet ever detected by Kepler has only just been confirmed. When scientists first notice evidence of ...

Since its launch in 2009, NASA's Kepler mission has used the transit method to confirm more than 60 new exoplanets and to identify 2,300 candidate planets now awaiting confirmation via further ...

The Kepler mission was conceived as a Discovery Program mission at the turn of the century and was approved as the tenth mission in the program in December 2001. At that time only 80 exoplanets ...

The exoplanet Kepler-10c didn’t get that memo. With 17 times the mass of Earth, the distant planet is the heaviest rocky planet known. And astronomers have no idea how it formed. With the mass ...

Kepler-62e is one of the latest additions to the habitable exoplanet catalog, added April 18. The planet is 1.61 times the radius of Earth, although astronomers do not yet know its mass or what it ...

NASA’s Kepler space telescope was launched for the ... still has plenty of power to comb the heavens for undetected exoplanets. In order to spot these new worlds, scientists began sifting ...

Using this technique, and by gathering the light curves from these stars, Kepler uncovered thousands of exoplanets. The UCLA team turned to 1,600 of these light curves to extract information about ...