Exoplanet Radio

Epsilon Indi Ab: A Twin of Jupiter

An international team of astronomers has directly imaged this exoplanet, one of the coldest ever seen. The team observed Epsilon Indi Ab using the coronagraph on Webb’s M

The Rogue Planets of JWST

The Orion Nebula, M42, is the largest stellar nursery close to Earth. Within this massive complex some 1300 light years away, the James Webb Space Telescope has unveiled

How Far Are the Closest Exoplanets with Life?

To increase our chances of finding life on other planets, a systematic approach needs to be adopted, one that applies reasonable assumptions that maximize our success. So

How Long Will Life on Earth Last?

Nothing lasts forever, stars live and die over the course of hundreds of millions to billions, and in the case of red dwarf stars, trillions of years. Planets are born fr

Exoplanet Temperatures from Secondary Eclipses

Over the course of this show, we’ve talked many many times about the Transit Method for detecting exoplanets. It is simply the measure of a star's decrease in brightness

TOI 1853 b: A Baffling Planet That Defies Explanation

Meet TOI-1853 b, one of the weirdest exoplanets ever discovered! It's about the size of Neptune, but four times more massive. It orbits its star so closely that it comple

Biosignatures: The Search for Life Beyond Earth

In recent years, scientists have made great strides in the search for extraterrestrial life. They have discovered thousands of exoplanets. And some of them are located in

The First Hycean World? JWST's Discovery of K2-18 b

The James Webb Space Telescope has completed observations of an exoplanet that may contain an ocean-covered surface underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. This discovery

Osiris: The Exoplanet That Changed Everything

On September 9, 1999, a team of astronomers from the High Altitude Observatory made a groundbreaking discovery. Using the radial velocity method, they detected a massive,

A Glimpse into the Early Stages of Planetary Evolution

Deep in the cosmos, NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered four new worlds orbiting a pair of young stars. These planets are providing scienti

TRAPPIST-1e: The Most Habitable Exoplanet?

TRAPPIST-1e is a rocky, close-to-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone around the ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 approximately 40 light-years away fr

Tidally Locked Worlds: Life in the Twilight Zone

Based on our experience here on Earth, we know life here to be tenacious and ubiquitous. Even in the harshest climates, if we look hard enough, we can usually find some s

What is the Habitable Worlds Observatory?

Finding habitable worlds has been a driving passion since we first learned there were other planets out there, and to find them, we are going to need a dedicated instrume

TESS's Breakthrough Discovery of Long-Period Exoplanets TOI 4600 b and c

Human beings have discovered over five thousand five hundred exoplanets. Over 80 percent of them have orbits shorter than 50 days which would place them at over twice as

Astronomers Confirm Proxima Centauri b is Not a Transiting Exoplanet

We know surprisingly little about Proxima Centauri b, but astronomers have just confirmed that it is not a transiting exoplanet. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanet

The Many Earth-Sized Worlds of TOI-700

Move over TRAPPIST-1, there a new system that is just as exciting. TOI-700 is a system of four rocky, Earth-sized worlds and some might be habitable Show Notes Available

Meet TrES-2b: The Planet That Reflects Almost No Light

Here is a planet that is so dark that it reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it. How can a planet be so black? What makes it glow like a burning emb

How Starshades Can Help Us Find New Worlds

Most of the 5000 exoplanets discovered so far have been found using methods that don’t actually see the planet at all. Brightness dimmings and star wobbles only get us so

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will Revolutionize our Understanding of Exoplanets

The next big milestone in our study of exoplanets is a telescope that can see beyond the limits of our eyes, beyond the boundaries of our solar system, beyond the frontie

Is TRAPPIST-1 c Habitable? New Webb Telescope Observations Suggest Not

A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c, which is one of seven rocky planets orbiting an ultracool red dwarf star 40