Sentences with phrase «semi-habitable in close orbit»

But instead of orbiting sedately, hundreds of millions of kilometres from their stars, the first crop were frantically whirling round in close orbits, blistering in hellish heat.

The goal of this work that I did with Berkeley astronomer Andrew Howard was to measure the fraction of stars that have small planets in close orbits.

The two main methods — measuring the wobble of stars caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting planet and measuring the periodic dimming of a star as a planet passes in front — both favor big planets in close orbits.

This is because their intense magnetic activity interferes with the light emitted by the star to a far greater extent than a potential giant planet, even in a close orbit.

Theorists will have to refine their models of planet formation, but will still have to explain how systems like our own ended up with giant planets farther out and small planets in closer orbits.

One common idea suggested by the public is that a stellar - mass black hole in close orbit around Boyajian's star could block the star's light.

But if these unseen bullies are there, they may have removed many of the smaller planets in closer orbits, leaving behind the solitary worlds that Kepler sees.

On February 25, 2008, a team of astronomers released a paper on simulation results which support the conclusions of previous studies that multiple - planet systems could have formed in close orbits around both heavy - element rich, Alpha Centauri A and B.

Pulsar surveys with the SKA will discover tens of thousands of pulsars, amongst which we expect to find a pulsar in orbit around a stellar - mass black hole and pulsars in close orbit around the super-massive black hole at the Galactic Centre.

With a brown dwarf within a parsec of our own system being a hopeful and still - possible scenario for a more - accessible long - term destination than the Alpha Centauri system, I'd say the idea and hope that there could be something even semi-habitable in close orbit around that brown dwarf is a lot more exciting than just rocks or iceballs.

Abstract: In the Solar system the planets» compositions vary with orbital distance, with rocky planets in close orbits and lower - density gas giants in wider orbits.

Here we report another violation of the orbit - composition... ▽ More In the Solar system the planets» compositions vary with orbital distance, with rocky planets in close orbits and lower - density gas giants in wider orbits.

Not exact matches

The Tesla is well into space now and is headed towards an orbit that will put it in close proximity to Mars.

SpaceX is looking to launch several small satellites into a lower orbit than Viasat in order to cut down on latency errors, with the idea being the closer a satellite is to Earth, the less likely there will be hiccups.

«This will not be the only flyover of Great Red Spot planned for Juno's [orbits], but it is the closest [Great Red Spot] flyover in the plans,» Candice Hansen, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Business Insider in an email.

Also known as a perigean full moon or perigee syzygy, a supermoon happens when the moon is full at its closest point in its not - quite - circular orbit around Earth.

Candice Hansen, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Business Insider in an email that «this will not be the only flyover of the Great Red Spot planned» for Juno's orbits, «but it is the closest.»

In terms of visibility, your goal is to be in a kind of celestial sweet spot where you are orbiting not too far away from the big planets or the smaller ones (so you can keep an eye on both), but not so close that you get pulled by gravity into them (and crashIn terms of visibility, your goal is to be in a kind of celestial sweet spot where you are orbiting not too far away from the big planets or the smaller ones (so you can keep an eye on both), but not so close that you get pulled by gravity into them (and crashin a kind of celestial sweet spot where you are orbiting not too far away from the big planets or the smaller ones (so you can keep an eye on both), but not so close that you get pulled by gravity into them (and crash).

The red car — along with a dummy in the driver's seat named «Starman» — were targeting an elliptical, or egg - shaped, orbit around the sun that would at times get close to Mars.

A supermoon is when a full moon occurs at the same time the moon is closest to the Earth in its orbit.

Instead, he planted his feet and calmly allowed death to orbit him, allowing the bulls to come so close hairs would be stuck in his jacket.

In the summer of 2000 I was commissioned by Harper's Bazaar magazine to write about the young gilded special advisers who were working for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown or orbiting around them, or who were close to Peter Mandelson.

Justin R. Crepp, Freimann Assistant Professor of Physics, was part of the team that discovered KELT - 4Ab, a so - called «hot Jupiter» because it is a gas giant that orbits extremely close to one of the stars in its solar system.

«During the past few years our group,» says David Jones, an astrophysicist at the IAC and another of the authors on the paper, «has discovered that the planetary nebulae with the biggest discrepancies in their abundances are usually associated with binary central stars which have been through a phase with a common envelope, that is to say the process of expansion of the more massive of the two stars has meant that the other star is orbiting within its outer atmosphere, and the viscosity has brought the stars very close to one another.

Then, effectively by accident, Batygin and Brown noticed that if they ran their simulations with a massive planet in an anti-aligned orbit — an orbit in which the planet's closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, is 180 degrees across from the perihelion of all the other objects and known planets — the distant Kuiper Belt objects in the simulation assumed the alignment that is actually observed.

Referred to as «extreme KBOs» (eKBOs) by the authors, all of these have extremely large orbital eccentricities, in other words, they get very close to the Sun at one point on their orbital journey, only to swing far out into space once they pass the Sun, on long elliptical orbits that take these strange mini worlds hundreds of AUs away from the Sun.

But because a red dwarf is dimmer overall than our Sun, a planet in the habitable zone would have to orbit much closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun.

In their paper, «Corralling a Distant Planet with Extreme Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects,» Malhotra and her co-authors, Kathryn Volk and Xianyu Wang, point out peculiarities of the orbits of the extreme KBOs that went unnoticed until now: they found that the orbital period ratios of these objects are close to ratios of small whole numbers.

Comet 252P / LINEAR is traveling away from Earth and the sun; its orbit will bring it back to the inner solar system in 2021, but not anywhere close to the Earth.

A comet produces jets of material as it travels close to the sun in its orbit.

This group of worlds has stayed in flat, circular orbits right where they were formed, unperturbed by the goings - on closer to the sun.

Because planets that are close to their stars are easier for telescopes to see, most of the rocky super-Earths discovered so far have close - in orbits — with years lasting between about two to 100 Earth days — making the worlds way too hot to host life as we know it.

The bulk of the solar system's regular satellites — those moons that stick close to their planets in roughly equatorial orbits — formed this way, rather than taking shape simultaneously with the planets as a direct result of planet formation, French astrophysicists have concluded.

In December 2011, astronomers identified the gas cloud, called G2, and found that its orbit would bring it perilously close to the Milky Way's central black hole by mid-2013.

Whenever Venus and Earth arrive at the closest point in their orbits, Venus always presents the same face to us.

While all the planets orbiting the sun closer than this tilted blue giant have been known to humans since ancient times, Uranus wasn't spotted until William Herschel saw it in 1781.

It's tucked in very close to its star; it orbits its star every three and a half days.

Ganymede orbits closer to Jupiter, whose gravity pulled in passing debris (Nature Geoscience, DOI: 10.1038 / ngeo746).

Planets orbiting more compact objects, such as white dwarfs, pulsars and black holes, might have even shorter years since they can get closer in.

Several other super-Earths have been identified in systems much like our solar system, with small planets closer to the star and giants in the outer orbits.

To begin with, they orbited close to the plane of the ecliptic in the same direction as the planets, but their orbits were deformed by the galaxy's tidal force and by interactions with nearby stars, gradually becoming more inclined and forming a more or less spherical reservoir,» Morais said.

Following its 2004 discovery in a scorching close orbit around a star 40 light - years away, astronomers dubbed the planet a «super-Earth.»

LOOK CLOSER NASA's next exoplanet hunting telescope, TESS (shown in this artist's illustration), will seek out worlds orbiting the nearest and brightest stars.

For years, astronomers expected to see elsewhere what they saw in our own orderly solar system: rocky planets close to a star and gas giants farther away, all in neat, nearly circular orbits.

Comet 67P / Churyumov - Gerasimenko's 6.6 - year orbit has taken it around the solar system countless times, but Rosetta joined it for its most recent close pass to the sun in August.

TRIPLE THREAT A pulsar (left) is orbited by two white dwarfs — one close in, one farther away — in this illustration of the system PSR J0337 +1715.

After years of scrutinizing the closest star to Earth, a red dwarf known as Proxima Centauri, astronomers have finally found evidence for a planet, slightly bigger than Earth and well within the star's habitable zone — the range of orbits in which liquid water could exist on its surface.

A clue may lie in the moons» orbits, which lie very close to Saturn's rings.

On January 4, Earth reaches perihelion, the point in its orbit where it comes closest to the sun.

«We think the 15N15N enrichment fundamentally comes from chemistry in the upper atmosphere, at altitudes close to the orbit of the International Space Station,» Yeung said.