'Astronomers make the first Earth-based CCD images of an exoplanet'

[Delta4Embassy]

Still just a few blurry pixels, but still.

PlanetQuest - The Search for Another Earth

Article explains that this process will help them directly image planets in visible light wavelengths so we can see them, whereas this feat is still only imaging them in light spectra we can't see without mechanical help.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

As of this post, 5,537 exoplanets discovered (unconfirmed/confirmed) (3845/1692)

So far, life is only confirmed to exist on 1 planet, Earth. But if, for the sake of illustration, the very next one is detected to have life, then a figure of 1 in 5538 will be what we glean from it. And with 200 billion stars in just this galaxy, and 100 billion other galaxies out there that could be said to be (assuming just 1 planet per star which is unlikely-low)

36.1 million life-sustaining planets in just our galaxy (200 bn / 5538)

 

[waltky]

Youngest planet ever discovered outside our solar system...

Astronomers Detect Youngest Exoplanet
June 21, 2016 - Astronomers say they have found the youngest planet ever discovered outside our solar system.

The planet, called K2-33b, which was detected by the Kepler space telescope, is only 5 to 10 million years old and just slightly larger than Neptune. Unlike Neptune, which orbits the sun every 165 years, K2-33b travels around its star every five days. K2-33b is 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. "Our Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old," said Trevor David of Caltech in Pasadena, lead author of a new study published online June 20, 2016, in the journal Nature. "By comparison, the planet K2-33b is very young. You might think of it as an infant."

K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date.​

How planets form remains a mystery, especially large planets orbiting so close to their stars. Most of the 3,000 or so exoplanets, planets outside our solar system, that have been discovered, are in star systems that are at least a billion years old. There are two theories about how K2-33b formed. One holds that it “migrated” there in what astronomers call “disk migration.” That process takes hundreds of thousands of years, likely ruling it out as the way K2-33b formed. Another is that it could have formed “in situ,” or exactly where it is today. "After the first discoveries of massive exoplanets on close orbits about 20 years ago, it was immediately suggested that they could absolutely not have formed there, but in the past several years, some momentum has grown for in situ formation theories, so the idea is not as wild as it once seemed," said David.

Researchers say there have been other, much older exoplanets found circling their suns very tightly, but how a planet as large as K2-33b got there has been more puzzling. The Kepler telescope detected K2-33b using a process called the transit method in which the star dims ever so slightly as the planet passes in front of it. The same issue of Nature also describes another new exoplanet orbiting a star called V830, which is 420 light-years from Earth. It is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting one-twentieth the distance from Earth to the sun.

Astronomers Detect Youngest Exoplanet

See also:

Pluto May Have a Liquid Ocean
June 22, 2016 - Far out, at the edge of our solar system, there's water. A new study indicates that Pluto appears to still have a liquid ocean under its icy crust.

Using data from the New Horizons space probe, researchers from Brown University found that the dwarf planet has been expanding. If the ocean had “frozen into oblivion” long ago, Pluto would have shrunk. “Thanks to the incredible data returned by New Horizons, we were able to observe tectonic features on Pluto’s surface, update our thermal evolution model with new data and infer that Pluto most likely has a subsurface ocean today,” said Noah Hammond, a graduate student in Brown’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, and the study’s lead author. Spectacular images from New Horizons have changed the impression of Pluto from a “simple snowball in space” to something more “exotic,” with surface ice composed of water, nitrogen and methane. Furthermore, the planet is spiked with mountains that are hundreds of meters high in contrast to the now famous “heart-shaped plain.” The surface is also far from static, as the probe revealed sinuous faults “hundreds of kilometers long, as deep as 4 kilometers.”

Those tectonic features, researchers say, point to a strong possibility of a subsurface ocean. “What New Horizons showed was that there are extensional tectonic features, which indicate that Pluto underwent a period of global expansion,” Hammond said. “A subsurface ocean that was slowly freezing over would cause this kind of expansion.” The researchers added that despite the frigid temperatures so far from the sun, “there may have been enough heat-producing radioactive elements within Pluto’s rocky core to melt part of the planet’s ice shell.” Then, researchers said, the melted liquid would have likely refrozen and expanded. “If Pluto had on ocean that was frozen or in the process of freezing, extensional tectonics on the surface would result, and that’s what New Horizons saw,” the researchers wrote in a news release.

A journey to Pluto reveals a close-up view of mountains of water in frozen fields of nitrogen and methane.​

A gravitational “tug of war” with Pluto’s moon Charon could have caused the faults, but researchers say that dynamic has “long since wound down.” To determine the state of a potential ocean today, the researchers used data from New Horizons and came to the conclusion that a frozen ocean would have caused the planet to contract. “We don’t see the things on the surface we’d expect if there had been a global contraction,” Hammond said. “So we conclude that ice II has not formed, and therefore that the ocean hasn’t completely frozen.” Ice II is a more compact form of standard ice, so an ocean of it would "occupy a smaller volume and lead to a global contraction on Pluto, rather than an expansion."

The researchers added that it is possible that if the Pluto’s ice shell were less than 260 kilometers thick, an ocean below could have frozen without causing contraction, but their updated model indicates the ice shell is over 300 kilometers thick. “Those exotic ices are actually good insulators,” Hammond said. “They may be helping Pluto from losing more of its heat to space. That’s amazing to me,” Hammond said. “The possibility that you could have vast liquid water ocean habitats so far from the sun on Pluto — and that the same could also be possible on other Kuiper belt objects as well — is absolutely incredible.”

Pluto May Have a Liquid Ocean