Search for Alien Worlds

European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system - the nearest to Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun.

Planet hunters unveil the tricks of the trade for finding planets around nearby stars and scanning them for signs of life. Are we alone? It's the biggest question ever. And the answer is almost within reach. With so many galaxies, and each with so many stars, how could the Earth be unique?

Astronomers have discovered totally unexpected structures within the dusty disc around the star AU Microscopii. What do these fast-moving wave-like features tell us about the early years of this restless young solar system? From Hubblecast.

Astronomers using ESO's leading exoplanet hunter HARPS have today announced more than fifty newly discovered planets around other stars. Among these are many rocky planets not much heavier than the Earth. One of them in particular orbits within the habitable zone around its star.

Giant telescopes are being used to search for the subtle signs of magnetic fields in other stars and even to map out the star spots on their surfaces. This information shows what the implications might be for life on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe.

One of the most fertile grounds for finding Earth-like planets turns out to be a long-overlooked class of stars. M Stars, or red dwarfs, range from one half to one-twentieth the mass of our sun and make up 76% of all the stars in our galaxy.