Tag: Pegasus

Hubble’s Best View of a Planetary Disk

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At one point in history, let’s say around 1994, astronomers were fairly confident in their understanding of the formation of planetary systems.  Even though at the time we hadn’t found any planets orbiting other stars, they had long been theorized, and we figured that systems would form much like our own solar system.  Rocky planets in the interior, gaseous giants further out, and a huge icy debris field at the outer edges. And then along came 51 Pegasi b.  Half the mass of Jupiter, it orbits its star in only 4 days, far closer than Mercury.  It was considered a...

Magnetic Fields on Distant Exoplanets?

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Twenty Years of exoplanet research has seen incredible advances in detecting planets orbiting distant stars, as well as their size, orbit period, orbit distance, and even atmospheric composition.  But the next step in understanding exoplanets is to learn about their magnetic fields. We know that many exoplanets should have magnetic fields.  It makes sense, since nearly every world in our own solar system has some sort of magnetism.  But for the first time, an international team of Astronomers, led by Kristina Kislyakova of the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have discovered a way to detect magnetic fields...