Tag Archives: dust disks

Searching for Planets in Clouds of Dust

*A UA astronomy research team was awarded a $600,000 grant for technology development under NASA’s Explorer mission program. The mission would send a space telescope high above Earth’s surface to watch how planets around other stars form and evolve.*

There has been much talk about possible Earth-like planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope launched just two years ago in the search for life outside our solar system. So far, it has discovered more than 2,326 possible Earth-like planets, and the number keeps growing.

At the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, an astronomy research team is asking questions such as, “How do planets like those found by Kepler arise? What materials are present during their initial formation? How do they evolve?” (more…)

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