NASA’s Pandora satellite has started science observations of at least 20 exoplanets, measuring their host stars so Webb’s atmospheric results can be read more reliably.
The post NASA’s Pandora Mission Begins Separating Planet Light From Star Light appeared first on Curiosmos.
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Title: The Exozodi Spectral Effect: Residual Habitable Zone Dust May Bias exoEarth Characterization
Authors: Miles H. Currie et al.
First Author’s Institution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Status: Published in AJ
Figure 1: Zodiacal light as seen from Cerro Paranal. [ESO/Y. Beletsky; CC BY 4.0]
This zodiacal dust is not exclusive to the solar system. Other star systems, such as Tau Ceti and Vega, have been found to host similar clouds of interplanetary dust. This means planets imaged in these systems will also have emission from this dust mixed into the light that we observe from the planets. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) is a future space telescope mission under development by NASA. One of its primary science goals is to directly image 25 Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars and look for signs of life (or biosignatures) in these planets’ atmospheres. Exozodiacal dust (aka exozodi) represents the biggest source of astrophysical noise that will need to be subtracted out from HWO observations of exoEarths. The authors of today’s article look at the potential impact of exozodi emission on the spectra of exoEarth atmospheres.
Figure 2: Different models of three “zodis” of dust observed at an inclination of 60 degrees plotted across HWO’s potential wavelength range. The gray scattering model is shown in green, the solar system’s model is shown in black, with the red and blue debris disk models shown in their respective colors. The top panel shows the flux contrast between the dust and the star. The middle panel shows the flux per area. The bottom panel shows the total flux captured with a 7.2-meter HWO with the thin blue line representing the spectrum of an Earth twin 10 parsecs (33 light-years) away for comparison. [Currie et al. 2026]
The authors first assume four different models of exozodi dust and how the dust’s emission changes with wavelength. The first model assumes a dust cloud that acts as a gray scatterer, meaning the particles scatter all wavelengths of light with no preference, and the second model’s dust acts just like the solar system’s does. However, it’s unknown whether the composition of exozodi will be the same as the solar system’s. Therefore, they adopt two more models of exozodi that act just like debris disks that have different compositions. One model is bluer in color because it is made up of smaller particles that preferentially scatter blue light, and the other model is redder in color because it is made up of bigger dust particles or different chemical compositions. Each of these models over HWO’s wavelength range can be seen in Figure 2. The authors then simulate a modern Earth atmosphere (both clear and 50% cloudy) as well as an Archean Earth atmosphere to understand how different exozodi models will affect observations of different exoplanet atmosphere conditions and compositions.
In general, the effect that zodiacal dust has on the spectra of Earth-like planets can be broken down into two categories: its effect on the continuum and on the spectral features. The continuum is the object’s light emitted over all wavelengths and uninterrupted by spectral features. Spectral features are absorption and emission lines. These create either a dip or peak in the spectrum where atoms have either absorbed or emitted light at that particular wavelength. Lines at specific wavelengths tell us that a certain material is there, providing a list of possible chemicals that could be present in the planet’s atmosphere. For a brief summary of spectroscopy more generally, see here.
In the case of the continuum, exozodiacal emission raises the continuum, meaning the base flux of the planet is raised and absorption lines become more shallow. These effects can be seen in Figure 3, where the authors’ simulated spectra are plotted with and without zodiacal dust included. Not only is the continuum elevated for all models including zodiacal dust, notice how the dips become shallower at longer wavelengths. Because dust primarily radiates thermally, the red debris disk model nearly smooths out all dips beyond 1.25 microns! Molecules that absorb at these longer wavelengths, such as water or methane, may not be correctly identified with this type of exozodiacal emission.
Figure 3: Spectra of simulated modern-Earth atmospheres for clear (solid bright lines) and cloudy (solid dimmer lines) scenarios. The Archean Earth atmosphere is plotted in dotted gray. The redder exozodiacal spectrum has an elevated continuum and smoothed spectral features as opposed to the original, zodi-free spectrum plotted in black. [Currie et al. 2026, with annotations by Kaz Gary]
From Figure 3, the effects of zodiacal dust are minimized with a bluer zodiacal dust model. This means systems with “bluer” zodiacal dust may be more optimal for HWO observations, as bluer dust does not scatter as much starlight as gray, solar system–like, or red dust. From their results, the authors recommend that the residual exozodi-to-planet flux ratio (in the V-band wavelengths) be kept to less than 10-2 in order to correctly understand the line depths (identify if a molecule is present or not) and 10-3 in order to accurately retrieve molecular abundances (understand how much of a molecule is present in the atmosphere). Dust is pesky enough here on Earth, but to find life on another planet like ours, we’ll dust have to deal with it.
Original astrobite edited by Anavi Uppal.
About the author, Kaz Gary:
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate at The Ohio State University with a passion for planets. My current work focuses on modeling exoplanet observations for the Habitable Worlds Observatory and understanding planetary atmospheres. Outside of research, I help develop planetarium shows and love all forms of science communication. In my free time, I enjoy playing tabletop RPGs, painting, watching terrible reality TV, and hanging out with my pet hedgehog.
The post Dust Deal with It appeared first on AAS Nova.
A brand new observatory began its tenure on Aug. 30 — it's called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and it's equipped with a high-tech tool that can directly photograph planets beyond our solar system.
The tool is called a coronagraph; in simple terms, a coronagraph is a device that can be affixed to a telescope and block out the light of a star the telescope is looking at to study features around that star. Without such a device, starlight can be so overpowering that it outshines details nearby. You can think of a coronagraph as a way to recreate a total solar eclipse, except instead of the moon blocking out the sun it's a humanmade mask of sorts that does that trick.
But while coronagraphs have been used many times before, the one that just launched toward the stars is unprecedented. "The Roman Space Telescope is carrying the most advanced coronagraph that humanity has ever put into space," Dominic Benford, the telescope's program scientist, told Space.com.
If you can remember the striking "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft captured while floating about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the sun, this is the kind of thing scientists expect to see with Roman's coronagraph. A menagerie of Pale Brown Dots should soon make us feel the weight of our existence.
"I love the feeling of smallness that comes from understanding you're not alone in the universe," Vanessa Bailey, Roman's coronagraph instrument scientist, told Space.com.
Coronagraphs aren't really a new thing. Often, they're even used to study our own sun.
For example, NASA's PUNCH mission — which stands for Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere — launched in 2025 and consists of four spacecraft, one of which holds a coronagraph. This coronagraph blocks out the light of our sun in order to reveal the wispy tendrils of the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona.
"In fact, more than 100 years ago, astronomers used coronagraphs to create an artificial eclipse to study the sun's corona," Bailey said during a press briefing on Aug. 29, a day before Roman launched to space. "That's the reason for the name."
But when it comes to other stars, coronagraphs hold another purpose. They can block out a star's light in such a way that planets actually orbiting that star come into view.
"We can block that starlight until we have only a few parts per billion of the light of the star remaining," Benford said of Roman's coronagraph. As a result, he explained, "we can directly see the light bouncing off something like a Jupiter around another star, which we've never been able to do before."
This process will surely give us our Pale Brown Dots — but to take things a step further, scientists will also be able to dissect the light bouncing off the theoretical Jupiter to reveal what the atmosphere of the world is like, too.
To be clear, Roman isn't the only astronomy tool we have that utilizes a coronagraph while looking beyond our solar system. Even the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have their own, for that matter. However, Roman's is far more complex.
For one, the Roman's coronagraph doesn't exactly "block" out starlight like a standard coronagraph does. For the "moon" in its artificial eclipses, it uses a combination of patterned disks and special filters to create destructive interference with the light of a target star. Destructive interference means competing waves of light cancel one another out, leading to a zeroed amplitude. In effect, this blocks out the starlight as necessary and only allows light reflected off the planets of interest to pull through and reflect off the coronagraph's mirrors.
Which brings us to the next special part about Roman's coronagraph: It's the first "active" coronagraph to fly in space.
What this means is it can adjust those mirrors in real-time to make sure its exoplanet observations are as clear as possible. This is important because as light reflects off the coronagraph's mirrors, it can create small distortions that mess up the delicate destructive interference dance. You'd need to adjust to bring the balance back, and these adjustments are possible because Roman's coronagraph has hundreds of tiny pistons built into its mirrors. This makes them deformable so they can change shape to account for distortions.
If it all works out, this coronagraph should be capable of detecting exoplanets that are about 100 million times fainter than their stars.
"These deformable mirrors are a real engineering feat," Bailey said during the press briefing. "They can be commanded with the precision approaching the size of an atom, and this is what really allows us to make this transformative performance."
As for what the specific hope is for Roman's coronagraph, Bailey explained there are a few nearby star systems the team is particularly interested in peering into because we have hints of Jupiter-like planets orbiting in those systems that still haven't been imaged. "Or," she said, "there may be really interesting remnants of dust and debris from the process of planet formation." Perhaps that dust could exist in the habitable zones of the stars Roman looks toward, and perhaps this could tell us more about the birth of planet Earth.
"That is interesting in its own regard but also interesting as a precursor to the Habitable Worlds Observatory," Bailey said, in reference to NASA's next great project that will be equipped with a more advanced version of Roman's coronagraph. "We can study how dusty these nearby systems are and understand whether any of them might have too much dust for us to be able to observe an Earth-like planet in the future."
While Roman will pretty much be focusing on Jupiter-like worlds because they're big enough to be detected with its current capabilities, HWO could certainly find another Earth someday.
And before we wrap up, we must briefly mention this newly christened exoplanet hunter's partner tool, the majorly impressive Wide Field Instrument (WFI) that can survey huge swaths of sky in one go. It is because of the partnership between the WFI and its coronagraph that Roman will immensely expand our exoplanet gallery, says associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate Nicky Fox. The coronagraph won't be finding new exoplanets alone, but rather will be diving deeper into exoplanets the WFI finds first.
WFI will use two different techniques to contribute to our gallery. The first one is called the transit technique, and it's the same method big names like Kepler and TESS tapped into. It involves noticing dips in starlight that happen when a possible planet transits the face of a star from the telescope's vantage point. "If you see that happen multiple times," Fox said, "you can infer that it's a planet, and you can get the radius and the size of the planet from that observation."
The second technique has to do with gravitational lensing, which refers to how objects with mass in space (and therefore gravitational influence) can warp the very fabric of spacetime and alter the path of light traveling through the affected region. What comes to mind might be a mighty galaxy cluster twisting spacetime like a sheet of satin, but little things like stars and planets can do it, too. The so-called "microlensing" effect of smaller objects warping spacetime leads to the brightening of background objects.
Fox sums up WFI's two techniques in a nutshell: "If you see a little dip, that can suggest there's a transiting planet. You see a little brightening, that can suggest there's a microlensing planet."
For WFI, the microlensing technique will be sensitive to Earth-size planets in the habitable zones of their stars, while the transiting technique will be more sensitive to planets closer to their stars. And as Bailey reminds us, there are absolute heaps of planets to test Roman out on: "When you look up at the night sky, most of those stars have planets."
Right now, we only know of about 6,000 of those worlds. Fox believes this new space telescope could unveil 100,000 more.
Wouldn’t a free-floating planet eventually cross paths with a star or even a black hole and start revolving around it? YinToronto, Ontario Free-floating planets (FFPs) or rogue planets are bodies that move through space by themselves, not locked into an orbit around a star. While some may have begun as typical planets flung out ofContinue reading "Why aren’t free-floating planets captured when they fly past stars?"
The post Why aren’t free-floating planets captured when they fly past stars? appeared first on Astronomy Magazine.
Beyond the solar system, the line between planet and star can get blurry. Astronomers call objects that fall between the size ranges of planets and stars substellar objects. One type of substellar object, called a brown dwarf, forms from collapsing gas clouds like a star, but is not quite massive enough to fuse hydrogen in its core. Some can briefly fuse a heavier form of hydrogen, known as deuterium, in their cores, though never enough to produce starlight. Others are small and cold enough to develop complex atmospheres.
Recently, astronomers discovered a new type of substellar object in a star-forming region of the Milky Way Galaxy called IC 348. Using observational data from the JWST’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph (JWST NIRSpec), they found objects 0.2% to 1.2% the mass of the Sun that float freely like stars but have carbon-containing molecules called hydrocarbons in their atmospheres. Because these objects are smaller than known brown dwarfs and have evidence of hydrocarbons, scientists refer to them as H-type objects.
To investigate what H-type objects are and where they fit within the spectrum of substellar objects, researchers Richard J. Parker and Catarina Alves de Oliveira analyzed survey data on stars and substellar objects in IC 348, then conducted follow-up simulations to uncover how H-type objects formed. The main question they asked was whether H-type objects form from collapsing gas clouds, like brown dwarfs and stars, or develop around host stars before being ejected and drifting freely through space, like planets.
First, they reviewed the observational records of IC 348 obtained with the JWST NIRSpec and the near-IR spectrograph SpeX at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. IC 348 has 495 stars and brown dwarfs combined, as well as 9 H-type objects. Estimates for the age of this star-forming region range from either 1 to 3 million years or 5 to 6 million years, depending on how different teams calculated it. From there, Parker and Alves de Oliveira compared where the stars, brown dwarfs, and H-type objects were located within the cluster. They found no unique spatial distribution among the 3 types of objects.
Then, the team simulated the evolution of IC 348 over 10 million years to determine which initial conditions would result in a spatial distribution closest to the survey data. They simulated an initial giant gas cloud and used a mathematical function to distribute its mass among the 495 constituent objects. The researchers then placed a Jupiter-sized planet around each simulated star that was approximately the Sun’s mass to determine whether they could grow and escape their home star and become H-type objects. They also repeated the simulations by placing the Jupiter-sized planets at distances from the Sun similar to those of Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune, and varied the sizes and star densities of the simulated IC 348 regions.
They found that if Jupiter-sized planets orbited their stars at roughly Jupiter’s distance from the Sun, then 5 to 15 of them could escape their stars in a region like IC 348, which would roughly match the number of known H-type objects. However, the escaped planets were distinctly more spread-out than the observed H-type objects, which share a similar spatial distribution with the cluster’s stars and brown dwarfs. Since the simulations did not match the observed distribution, the researchers suggested that these H-type objects are likely a new sub-category of very small brown dwarfs rather than escaped planets.
Although this study favors a brown dwarf origin for H-type objects, the exact details of how they formed remain up for debate. Astronomers still have multiple competing theories about how ordinary brown dwarfs form. Perhaps they are ejected from their gas cloud before fully forming, have their outer layers stripped by radiation from a nearby massive star, or simply form like stars on a slightly smaller scale. Regardless, future researchers will continue to explore this murky area of substellar astronomy.
The post Objects at the border between planets and stars appeared first on Sciworthy.
Now that NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on its way toward its Lagrange Point 2 (L2) destination, more of its mission goals are coming into focus, including the possibility that it could detect an Earth-like planet orbiting a star like our own Sun using gravitational microlensing.
The Roman team said such a detection could identify targets for the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory project, including scanning their atmospheres for signs of extraterrestrial life.
In NASA’s mission fact sheet, Roman’s planners pose several questions. These include:
Although scientists have used several methods to detect exoplanets, including Earth-like planets, Roman will employ three. These include the transit method, microlensing, and direct imaging. NASA said the combination of approaches will allow mission scientists to conduct a “sweeping search expected to uncover around 100,000 new exoplanets — a staggering leap compared to the nearly 6,200 currently known.”
“It is hoped that Roman will discover thousands of new exoplanets and significantly expand our knowledge of the diversity of planetary systems in our Galaxy,” explained Associate Professor Edita Stonkutė, an astrophysicist at Vilnius University unconnected to the Roman team, in a statement emailed to The Debrief.
Most exoplanets have been detected by the dimming of their host star when they transit between it and Earth, giving the transit method its name. Roman plans to use that same method for most of its larger planetary detections. However, among the expected tens of thousands of transit-method detections, mission planners expect a small but sizeable percentage to come from microlensing.
NASA said the “light-bending” microlensing phenomenon occurs when two distant stars “align closely from our vantage point.” Due to the strength of the nearer star’s gravity, the light from the more distant one is “warped” around the nearer one, essentially focusing it very briefly for a distant observer.
“If the alignment is especially close, the nearer star acts like a cosmic lens, focusing and magnifying light from the background star.” Professor Stonkutė explained. “By analysing these changes, astronomers can determine that the planet exists and estimate its mass and orbital characteristics.”
Critically, Professor Stonkutė also noted that microlensing can occur with objects other than stars, including exoplanets.
Using its Wide-Field Array, Roman will monitor hundreds of millions of stars. NASA said the observatory will monitor these target stars for “tiny surges in starlight” that typically signal a microlensing event.
Although the transit method is employed to detect larger exoplanets, NASA noted that microlensing “specializes in finding planets like those in our solar system.” The space agency added that this includes “worlds as lightweight as Mars in their star’s habitable zone or farther out.”
A star’s habitable zone is typically defined as the orbital plane where an exoplanet could sustain liquid water on its surface, a key ingredient for life as we know it.
Professor Stonkutė described microlensing as “particularly valuable” since it can detect planets that are difficult to spot with other planet-hunting methods. The professor said this includes “small Earth-like planets located far from their star.” The Roman team hopes to find “more than 1,000 microlensing planets.”
The professor warned that “most microlensing events cannot be predicted in advance.” As a result, telescopes need to actively scan large areas of the sky to increase the chances of a microlensing detection
“This is precisely where Roman has the edge over other telescopes that have searched for exoplanets using different methods,” the professor added.
While Roman is tasked with directly imaging exoplanets, finding another Earth around a Sun-like star will still require an indirect detection, most likely from a microlensing event. However, the Roman team notes that their observatory “will provide a crucial stepping stone for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept.”
According to the space agency, that “flagship” telescope, still awaiting final approval, “would be designed to photograph Earth-like planets for the first time ever.”
Roman may also be able to scan the atmospheres of planets detected with the transit method. The space agency said Roman “would also look for signs of life called biosignatures by measuring atmospheric gases like oxygen and ozone that could signal the presence of living things.”
Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org.
Welcome to this special edition of The Intelligence Brief… This week, NASA is preparing to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, its next flagship space observatory and a mission poised to transform our understanding of distant worlds and some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. In our analysis, we’ll be looking at 1) how Roman’s powerful Wide Field and Coronagraph instruments will survey the cosmos on an unprecedented scale, 2) how the telescope could discover thousands of new exoplanets—including elusive rogue worlds—and directly image planets around other stars, 3) how Roman will survey more than a billion galaxies in search of new clues about dark matter and dark energy, and 4) why its combination of Hubble-like image quality and an enormously wider field of view could usher in a new era of astronomical discovery.
“We are poised at the brink of unfathomable scientific discovery.”
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On Sunday morning, NASA will set a new milestone with the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, setting the course for discoveries that may include new insights into some of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
As NASA’s next flagship space observatory, this powerful new telescope is designed to discover thousands of distant worlds while also probing the lingering mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. Named after Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief of astronomy and an early advocate for the efforts that led to the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the new space observatory bearing her name is poised to offer one of the most detailed views of our universe ever captured.
Scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on August 30, 2026, at 7:26 a.m. EDT, the Roman telescope’s mission is comparable in ambition to those of the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, but also very different in many respects. Here’s a look at what to know about this historic mission, what it may help researchers uncover, and why it could set the pace for a range of important scientific advancements in the coming years.
At the heart of its mission, Roman will offer astronomers a remarkably wide view of the cosmos. Surveying immense portions of the sky, the powerful instruments on board the telescope will capture high-resolution imagery comparable to Hubble at certain optical and infrared wavelengths—imagery that could dramatically reshape scientists’ understanding of both planets and the universe they inhabit.
In terms of the technologies it will carry with it into space, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will rely on two primary instruments: its Wide Field Instrument (WFI) and Coronagraph Instrument. The WFI is equipped with a 300-megapixel near-infrared camera enabling wide-area imaging and spectroscopy, allowing Roman to conduct large-scale surveys with great precision and sensitivity—all of which make it ideal for use in the hunt for dark energy, exoplanets, and other hard-to-spot cosmic phenomena.
Meanwhile, Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument is designed specifically for imaging and studying exoplanets. Equipped for both imaging and spectroscopy, the coronagraph will suppress the overwhelming glare of distant stars, potentially making much fainter planets orbiting nearby visible. According to NASA, Roman’s powerful Coronagraph will be the first instrument deployed on a space observatory to leverage “numerically optimized, precision-fabricated coronagraph masks.”
By suppressing the overwhelming glare of distant stars so that much fainter planets around them become visible, Roman’s Coronagraph could achieve as much as 100 times the performance of existing facilities, offering a promising chance that some of the faintest planets in the cosmos—some as much as a billion times fainter than their host stars—could become visible.
With a little luck, Roman could also break new ground with the first direct imagery of an exoplanet possessing rings. Going beyond its immediate discoveries, the coronagraph will also demonstrate technologies that could eventually be incorporated into future observatories, including NASA’s proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory.
Presently, astronomers have confirmed roughly 6,000 planets beyond our Solar System. However, once Roman’s mission gets underway, that number could see a dramatic increase.
One of the ways it will achieve such landmark detections will be with the help of gravitational microlensing, which relies on detecting how the gravity of a foreground object can magnify light from a source much farther away. Using microlensing alone, there is a good chance Roman may discover several hundred—but more likely thousands—of planets, which may include worlds small enough that they have eluded previous detection using existing methods.
Along with the planets it discovers, astronomers anticipate that Roman will also find several new additions to the growing catalog of “rogue planets,” mysterious planetary bodies that wander through the cosmos without orbiting a star.
Additionally, NASA says that anywhere from 60,000 to 200,000 additional candidate planets could be revealed through transit observations, though only a fraction of these are expected to be confirmed through additional observations.
Arguably, one of the most significant components of Roman’s mission involves its study of the unseen side of the cosmos: the mysterious phenomena known as dark energy and dark matter.
In search of answers to such mysteries, Roman will soon begin scanning more than a billion galaxies as it maps the structure and evolution of the universe throughout cosmic history, providing data that will at the very least help researchers narrow down the most promising interpretations among a range of competing explanations for dark energy.
Simultaneously, the telescope will probe dark matter, the unseen material whose gravitational effects are currently needed to explain phenomena in our universe that include the motions of galaxies, as well as the evolution of some of the largest structures in the cosmos.
In many ways, what Roman is expected to achieve will be comparable to its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, although at a far greater scale.
At some wavelengths, Roman will be capable of producing images that approach the clarity of Hubble’s iconic views of our universe, all while capturing as much as 100 times more of the sky with each observation. By capturing more of the sky with each image it produces, Roman’s efforts to map the universe could occur at a remarkable pace—perhaps a thousand times faster than those of its predecessor.
If all goes according to plan, Roman will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at 7:26 a.m. EDT this Sunday, Aug. 30. NASA will begin live coverage of Roman’s launch on Sunday at 6:20 a.m. Eastern Time, and you can follow the updates online with NASA’s free streaming platforms.
Once it lifts off, Roman will be carried 930,000 miles from Earth to the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 2 region, which is the same location where the James Webb Space Telescope is currently operating. After it reaches orbit, for the next 90 days, Roman will undergo commissioning, after which science operations are expected to begin sometime in early 2027.
The observatory’s primary mission will last five years, although Roman could potentially remain operational for more than a decade, offering astronomers an unprecedented look at our universe and possibly a few answers to some of the most baffling questions about our universe.
That concludes this week’s installment of The Intelligence Brief. You can read past editions of our newsletter at our website, or if you found this installment online, don’t forget to subscribe and get future email editions from us here. Also, if you have a tip or other information you’d like to send along directly to me, you can email me at micah [@] thedebrief [dot] org, or reach me on X: @MicahHanks.
Here are the top stories we’re covering right now…
New research suggests that the circumplanetary disk surrounding the exoplanet PDS 70c contains a ring of dense dust, and the conditions within this ring may allow baby moons to form.
A closeup of PDS 70c’s circumplanetary disk within PDS 70’s protoplanetary disk. [ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Benisty et al.; CC BY 4.0]
There’s still debate over the exact source of the emission detected by ALMA. Does this emission come from dust, and if so, how is the dust distributed? Is the disk optically thick or optically thin? Does the emission even come from dust, or could it instead be free–free emission from unbound electrons navigating a charged-particle maze?
Yuhito Shibaike (Kagoshima University) and collaborators recently examined the hypothesis that the emission from PDS 70c’s circumplanetary disk arises from dust distributed in an optically thick ring. To test this hypothesis, the team explored two possible dust distributions, which they call “drift” and “ring.” In the drift model, dust grains within the circumplanetary disk migrate inward toward the planet, leaving much of the disk optically thin. Modeling suggests that this migration is typical in protoplanetary disks, and it might be common in circumplanetary disks as well.
Dust and gas surface density for the modeled disks in the drift (orange) and ring (blue) models. Click to enlarge. [Adapted from Shibaike et al. 2026]
Shibaike and coauthors found that the ring model naturally reproduced the observed spectral energy distribution for a range of reasonable parameters. The drift model, on the other hand, required an unrealistically high dust-to-gas ratio for the material accreted onto the circumplanetary disk from the parent protoplanetary disk to reproduce the observed spectral index.
Comparison of ALMA observations (colored symbols) and model predictions (colored lines) from the drift (orange) and ring (blue) models. Click to enlarge. [Adapted from Shibaike et al. 2026]
Luckily, this likely won’t remain a mystery forever: the next-generation Very Large Array, which is anticipated to begin full science operations in the mid-2030s, should be able to resolve the location of the dust within the circumplanetary disk and illuminate the source of emission.
Finally, if the dust surrounding PDS 70c is concentrated within a ring, what does that mean for the possibility of moons forming within the disk? Shibaike and collaborators found that the conditions within the ring likely satisfy the requirements of both the streaming instability and the gravitational instability, which are required for dust grains to clump together and form the rocky building blocks of baby moons. Perhaps the PDS 70 system will one day be the site of not only a circumplanetary disk, but an exomoon as well!
“Interpreting ALMA Multiwavelength Continuum Observations of PDS 70 c: An Optically Thick Dust Ring in the Circumplanetary Disk,” Yuhito Shibaike et al 2026 ApJL 1006 L26. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ae86f5
The post Probing Dust in the Disk of a Growing Giant Planet appeared first on AAS Nova.
Ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121b is once again puzzling astronomers. New JWST observations have revealed aspects of this superheated planet’s atmosphere that models cannot yet explain.
Among the more than 6,000 known exoplanets, there are many types of worlds that aren’t represented in our solar system. The most exotic and unfamiliar planets might be the ultra-hot Jupiters: giant planets nestled so close to their host stars that they are tidally locked, with temperatures on their permanently starlit sides climbing to thousands of degrees.
WASP-121b, which circles its F-dwarf host star every 30.5 hours, is one of the best-studied ultra-hot Jupiters. Previous work has started to reveal the complexity of its atmosphere, and now, data from JWST have opened a new window onto WASP-121b’s behavior.
A representation of an exoplanet’s phase curve. Click to enlarge. [ESA]
The team used two 3D general circulation models to predict the planet’s atmospheric structure and extract synthetic spectra and phase curves to compare against the JWST observations. Using nine model configurations in total, the team varied several inputs, including sources of atmospheric opacity, sources of atmospheric drag, and assumptions about whether clouds are able to form on the planet’s cooler nightside.
Frazier and collaborators found two aspects of WASP-121b’s phase curve that their models couldn’t explain: the planet emits less light overall than predicted, and the location of its phase-curve offset changes with wavelength.
Modeled phase curves, shown as the flux of the planet divided by the flux of the star, for WASP-121b (colored solid and dotted lines) compared to the best fit to the JWST observations (black line). Click to enlarge. [Frazier et al. 2026]
The phase-curve offset is the difference between a planet’s sub-stellar point (where the star is directly overhead) and the brightest point in the planet’s atmosphere. In general, some degree of offset is expected because planetary winds tend to whisk heat away from the sub-stellar point, placing the brightest point somewhere to the east (usually). For WASP-121b, the offset is unexpectedly small — suggesting a source of drag in the atmosphere that prevents winds from transporting heat away from the sub-stellar point — and it’s larger at shorter wavelengths. This wavelength dependence isn’t predicted by any of the models, and it’s not clear what causes it.
These results demonstrate something remarkable: that our observations of a planet nearly 900 light-years away have become so precise that they’re pushing our already complex models to include more physics — an exceptionally exciting motivation for model improvement!
“The Days Drag On on WASP-121 b: Interpreting Its NIRISS Spectroscopic Phase Curve with General Circulation Models,” Robert C. Frazier et al 2026 ApJ 1004 102. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae69ca
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Astronomers have found a third giant planet around Beta Pictoris, one of the best-known young planetary systems near Earth. The discovery is striking because the planet was not first picked out as a bright dot in a telescope image. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope found it in the spectrum of light coming from the system: […]
The post Webb Found a Hidden Planet in Beta Pictoris By Reading Its Atmosphere appeared first on Curiosmos.
NASA is currently targeting August 30 for the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from Florida. The date can move, as launch dates do, but the mission is close enough to the pad that its central idea deserves a clear look: Roman will survey huge stretches of the universe in one exposure, gathering […]
The post NASA Is Targeting an August Launch for Roman. Here’s What the Telescope Will See appeared first on Curiosmos.
On July 27, technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida installed a memory card containing 1,350,144 names as part of a commemorative plaque on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The names were submitted by people globally, including astronauts from Artemis II and Artemis III. The memory card will travel with the Roman observatory to the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2, or L2, about one million miles from Earth, where the Sun’s and Earth’s gravity balance out.
Roman is named after Dr. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer and one of the architects of the agency’s modern science program. Roman championed space-based observatories that could study the universe from above Earth’s hazy atmosphere while making their data broadly available to the scientific community.
NASA and SpaceX are targeting launch for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, Aug. 30 aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy.
To learn more about the Roman mission, visit:
Image credit: NASA/Jolearra Tshiteya
Astronomers have found a Jupiter-mass world orbiting a brown dwarf that orbits a star.
The post Exoplanet or Exomoon? New Contender Elicits Skepticism appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Since the discovery of the first world beyond the solar system in the 1990s, astronomers have become adept at spotting extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. But while NASA's exoplanet catalog has burgeoned to over 6,000 confirmed entries, moons around these worlds, known as exomoons, have proved elusive.
In fact, we have failed to make a single confirmed discovery of an exomoon despite being certain that just as the planets of the solar system have their own natural satellites, worlds in other star systems must have them too.
Now, this controversial drought of exomoons may have become even more confusing and, frankly, weird. That is because while studying a strange star system called CD-35 2722 with the Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have discovered an object that could be an exomoon, or it could be something that forces us to rethink our very definition of what a "moon" is and what a "planet" is.
The star CD-35 2722 is located around 73 light-years away and has around half the mass of the sun. It is orbited by a "failed star" or brown dwarf. These stellar bodies get their unfortunate nickname because they form like other stars but fail to gather enough mass to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores. In terms of mass, brown dwarfs are more massive than the largest gas giant planets, but smaller than the smallest stars, usually with around 13 to 80 times the mass of Jupiter, or around 0.013 to 0.08 times the mass of the sun.
The newly discovered object in CD-35 2722 is certainly moon-like, but rather than orbiting a planet as the moons in the solar system do, it orbits the system's brown dwarf.
"This system is somewhat hard to define using solar-system-based words like 'planet' and 'moon.' The exosatellite is clearly massive enough to be a planet, but it does not orbit a star, though it orbits an object that orbits a star," team leader Kevin Hoy of the Universidad Diego Portales and the Millennium Nucleus of Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS) in Chile, said in a statement.
"Being the third wheel in this system makes us want to call it a moon, even if it is nothing like the small, rocky moons we have in our system."
The team's research was published on Wednesday (July 22) in the journal Nature.
The team currently isn't able to definitively claim this object in CD-35 2722 is an exomoon, because that would require really nailing down a new definition of what a moon is.
"The satellite we report is a giant gaseous body orbiting a highly massive companion, itself several times the mass of Jupiter. We have a clear delineation between the planets and the sun in the solar system, so defining things like moons is simple," team member Alice Zurlo of the Universidad Diego Portales said. "In the CD-35 2722 system, where we are blurring the lines between stars, planets, and moons, the whole thing becomes more complicated to describe."
Zurlo and colleagues can, however, confidently claim this is an exosatellite, meaning it is a first-of-its-kind detection no matter what the future holds for its classification.
It is hoped that the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) currently under construction in Chile, will make a massive impact in the hunt for exomoons, and now, other exosatellites.
Until these objects begin to be uncovered, one thing this discovery re-emphasizes is something that astronomers have been gleefully discovering ever since the first exoplanet was spotted: planetary systems come in a variety of diverse, weird and wonderful forms.
Editor’s Note: Astrobites is a graduate-student-run organization that digests astrophysical literature for undergraduate students. As part of the partnership between the AAS and astrobites, we occasionally repost astrobites content here at AAS Nova. We hope you enjoy this post from astrobites; the original can be viewed at astrobites.org.
Title: Mars as an Exoplanet: Lessons from a Planet at the Edge of Habitability
Authors: Stephen R. Kane et al.
First Author’s Institution: University of California, Riverside
Status: Published in PSJ
If you’re a fan of Stranger Things like me, you’ll know of the Upside Down: a mirror world similar to our own, but with very different rules. Imagine Mars in the Upside Down, where it is no longer our next-door neighbor but a planet hundreds of light-years away. An astronomer on this Upside Down Earth would be looking at a distant speck with a transit signal barely distinguishable from noise. In this world, Mars would no longer be familiar but completely foreign, with unknown properties. Kane et al. suggest that treating Mars as if it were a stranger is a useful way to think about exoplanet science today.
JWST is hunting for atmospheres on small rocky planets around other stars. However, only a select few Mars-like exoplanets have been discovered (Figure 1). This is because sub-Earth planets are small and hard to detect, testing the bounds of current technology. The ones that have been discovered, such as TRAPPIST-1h and Kepler-138b, were detected due to favorable geometry. They happen to orbit very close to a low-mass star or sit in resonant multi-planet systems, which amplify the signal we are looking for. True Mars analogs with low flux and moderate orbital periods remain out of reach. This is precisely what makes Mars itself so important scientifically — it is the only planet of this type we can study up close.
Figure 1: A plot of confirmed exoplanets by mass and radius. Most confirmed exoplanets are larger and more massive than Earth. Mars-like planets (dots in the blue box) are rare in confirmed exoplanet detections. [Kane et al. 2026]
We know a lot about Mars in comparison to other planets thanks to rovers (such as Curiosity and Perseverance), atmospheric orbiters (such as Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN and the Mars Orbiter Mission), and other science missions (Figure 2). We know it once had water features with neutral pH and favorable chemistry for life from sedimentary evidence at the Gale and Jezero craters. We know its atmosphere is 95% CO2 with a surface pressure less than 1% of Earth’s. We know it once had an active magnetic dynamo, but the dynamo died out about 4 billion years ago, leading to solar wind steadily stripping away Mars’s atmosphere over time.
Figure 2: Earth and Mars to scale, showing their internal structures and atmospheres. Despite being neighbors, Mars is dramatically smaller with a thin CO2 atmosphere, similar to the planets JWST is struggling to characterize. [Kane et al. 2026]
JWST is currently studying the small rocky TRAPPIST-1 planets and is finding little evidence of atmospheres. The authors of today’s article explore the idea that these exoplanets are similar to Mars and perhaps are undergoing processes that strip away their atmospheres and create optimal conditions for life only for short durations. Using Mars as a blueprint, the authors show how we can better understand exoplanet processes, including volatile delivery and loss, photochemistry, climate evolution, obliquity forcing, planetary architecture, and intrinsic magnetism. For example, measurements of noble gases directly fingerprint Mars’s atmospheric escape process, and the authors argue these give us a calibration framework for interpreting future exoplanet spectra.
The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s microlensing survey will start revealing how common true Mars analogs actually are throughout the galaxy, while the future Habitable Worlds Observatory will attempt direct imaging of nearby candidates with unprecedented precision. Together, these missions will tell us whether Mars-like outcomes (brief habitability, catastrophic atmospheric loss, barren surfaces, etc.) are the default fate for small rocky planets. Interpreting that data will require the exact framework this article builds: one grounded in the only Mars analog we can study in detail.
Original astrobite edited by Sandy Chiu.
About the author, Ben Sherwin:
I am a physics PhD student and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford University, working with Josh Frieman. I am interested in theoretical and observational cosmology, specifically in cross-correlations between the cosmic microwave background and tracers of large-scale structure.
The post What if Mars Were a Stranger (Thing)? appeared first on AAS Nova.
A team of astronomers have discovered helium escaping from a rocky planet, marking the first detection of an atmosphere on a rocky world.
The post First Atmosphere Detected on a Terrestrial World appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet that a rocky planet beyond our solar system has managed to hold onto an atmosphere — a crucial ingredient for life as we know it.
The discovery marks the first time scientists have detected an atmosphere surrounding a rocky planet orbiting in the habitable zone of another star, the region around a star where temperatures could enable liquid water to exist on a planet's surface. The findings, published July 16 in the journal Science, could help astronomers narrow the search for potentially habitable worlds beyond our cosmic backyard.
"It's absolutely exciting," Edward Schwieterman, associate professor of astrobiology at the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. "We are getting closer to studying the atmospheres of worlds that could plausibly harbor life, with evidence of that life embedded in their observable spectra."
The planet, known as LHS 1140 b, lies about 48 light-years away from Earth and orbits a small, cool red dwarf star. At roughly 5.6 times Earth's mass, the exoplanet is classified as a super-Earth: a rocky planet larger than our own but much smaller than gas giants like Neptune.
It receives less than half the sunlight Earth gets, giving it an estimated surface temperature of around minus 53 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 47 degrees Celsius), according to previous estimates not accounting for an atmosphere. That makes the planet cold, but in the range astronomers consider potentially habitable.
Scientists have discovered thousands of exoplanets over the past few decades, including many rocky worlds. But determining whether those planets have atmospheres has proven far more difficult, because atmospheres around rocky planets are incredibly thin compared with those of giant planets, making them much harder to detect across vast cosmic distances.
Instead of looking for the atmosphere directly, the researchers behind the new study searched for a subtle clue that one existed: helium gas leaking into space. Using the WINERED spectrograph on the Magellan Clay Telescope in Chile, the team watched LHS 1140 b cross in front of its star and let a sliver of starlight filter through the planet's atmosphere on its way to Earth. As it did, the team looked for a tiny dip in the star’s light at the exact wavelength of infrared light that helium blocks — a telltale sign that gas was streaming off the planet and into space.
The prediction rested entirely on a mathematical model that had never been confirmed for a rocky planet. However, in September 2024, the team caught LHS 1140 b and a smaller, hotter neighboring planet, LHS 1140 c, transiting their star on the same night, less than 40 minutes apart. The researchers detected a clear helium signal from LHS 1140 b, while LHS 1140 c showed nothing.
The contrast matters: LHS 1140 c orbits much closer to its star than LHS 1140 b does and receives roughly five times the radiation, yet it's also smaller and less gravitationally bound — conditions that should make any escaping gas easier, not harder, to spot. Finding nothing there suggests LHS 1140 c's atmosphere was stripped away long ago, while LHS 1140 b, sitting farther out in cooler, calmer conditions, has managed to hold onto its own.
The discovery addresses a question astronomers have been working to answer for decades.
"Twenty years ago we wondered whether other terrestrial-type planets even existed," study co-author Robin Wordsworth, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, said in a statement. "Then we learned they're common, and found some in the habitable zone. The next question was whether any of them had managed to keep an atmosphere. Now we know at least one has."
The find is especially notable because red dwarf stars like LHS 1140 can bombard nearby planets with high-energy radiation capable of stripping atmospheres away over time. Based on the star's estimated age of at least 3.1 billion years, the researchers say LHS 1140 b's atmosphere has likely persisted despite that bombardment, suggesting some rocky planets around these common stars can hang onto their atmospheres for far longer than once assumed.
But the researchers caution that detecting helium does not mean the planet is inhabited — or even that it is habitable. The observations reveal only the planet's thin upper atmosphere, not its full composition. Scientists still don't know whether LHS 1140 b has oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor or other gases that could make its surface more Earth-like and hospitable to life.
Instead, the discovery opens a new way to study distant rocky worlds.
"The study demonstrates that, at least in some cases, we will be able to begin characterizing the atmospheres of potentially habitable planets," Schwieterman said. "If only rocky planets orbiting Sun-like stars retained atmospheres, we might have to wait one to two decades for the launch of the Habitable Worlds Observatory to search for biosignatures on rocky planets. I'm certainly excited about what comes next!"
Future observations will aim to determine what the rest of LHS 1140 b's atmosphere is made of and investigate whether it may harbor oceans or other features associated with habitability.
If there’s extraterrestrial life anywhere in the galaxy, chances are, it could be on LHS 1140b.
Astronomers have found that the exoplanet 48 light years away is spewing helium into space, a strong sign that it harbors a robust atmosphere, they reported in a new study published in the journal Science.
And that’s not all: it’s also a rocky world like our own, and orbits within its star’s habitable zone, the region around a star where a planet can maintain liquid — and possibly life-harboring — water on its surface.
If their findings are borne out, then it’s the first ever Earth-like exoplanet we’ve seen with an atmosphere stable enough to support life — and could vindicate the belief that there’s a whole host of similar planets out there, rather than our own being a rare anomaly in the cosmos.
“When there’s one, there’s more in exoplanets,” Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not involved in the study, told the New York Times. “Hopefully this is the start of something new.”
“At this point, we have absolutely no evidence for life on the planet,” lead author Collin Cherubim, a planetary scientist at Harvard University, added to the newspaper. “But we think all of the really important, essential ingredients are there.”
Spotting exoplanets is rare. While we have catalogued millions of stars, we have only confirmed around 6,000 worlds outside our solar system. Finding ones with an atmosphere is even rarer, since their signals are faint compared to the light of the planet’s star. In many cases, the planets with atmospheres are gas giants, which are unlikely to support life.
A key detail is that LHS 1140b orbits a red dwarf. Planets around red dwarfs are easier to spot because the diminutive stars are fainter, meaning it’s more noticeable when a planet passes in front of them. But since they emit less heat, a potentially habitable planet needs to orbit much closer to to them than we do our Sun. That could be a problem because red dwarfs are believed to be highly volatile. A closely orbiting planet would be in danger of being battered by solar flares and other powerful outbursts, which could strip it of its atmosphere and sterilize developing lifeforms.
The astronomers, however, found that LHS 1140b has a helium-rich atmosphere despite being — or because it’s in — the star’s habitable zone, demonstrating that the volatility of red dwarfs may not be as much as a problem as once thought (though this one appears to be less active than its cousins). They used a theoretical computer model of exoplanet atmosphere evolution that tracked how lighter elements like hydrogen and helium would be ejected by the outbursts of its host star, Science explained. When they applied it to LHS 1140b, which was first discovered in 2017, it predicted that its upper atmosphere would be dominated by helium, a promising sign that it’s capable of supporting life.
“Twenty years ago we wondered whether other terrestrial-type planets even existed,” Robin Wordsworth, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard, said in a statement about the work. “Then we learned they’re common, and found some in the habitable zone.”
“The next question was whether any of them had managed to keep an atmosphere,” he added. “Now we know at least one has.”
More on space: Scientists Say They’ve Identified an Earth-Like Planet Right Next Door
The post Astronomers Thrilled After Discovering Best Spot Yet to Look for Alien Life appeared first on Futurism.
Most of the gas in the Universe is a mixture of hydrogen and helium. It's thought that the initial atmospheres of most planets also start out that way. However, over billions of years, as planets evolve, the composition of their atmospheres may shift. Hydrogen can react with other chemicals, and both it and helium can be lost to space. Venus, Earth, and Mars are thought to have second atmospheres, with their original hydrogen/helium envelopes having been lost and/or transformed.
The dynamics of loss are complicated. Lighter elements are lost more easily, but hydrogen can be protected by being incorporated into molecules like methane and ammonia. The gravity of the body can help retain some molecules, and a magnetic field can limit radiation's ability to blast material out of the atmosphere. Proximity to a star will matter too, both because of the radiation it produces and because it can heat the atmosphere and expand it to where gravity's influence is less substantial.
Given all these complications, it can be difficult to know what to expect to find on exoplanets. But a study in Wednesday's issue of Nature describes observations of helium being lost from the atmosphere of an exoplanet orbiting the star LHS 1140, about 50 light-years away. Based on the rate at which the helium is being lost, we can infer something about the remaining atmosphere.
© NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
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