star system

Citizen scientists find remarkable exoplanet named after Harry Potter character

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Citizen scientists sifting through data collected by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have discovered a record-breaking world and given it a memorable nickname: Percival, after the father of Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books. In more official terms, however, the extrasolar planet, or ‘exoplanet’, is called TOI 4633 c. … Read more

This rare exoplanet system has 6 ‘sub-Neptunes’ with mathematically perfect orbits

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Astronomers have discovered an unusual star system located just 100 light-years away from us, with six planets immensely close to their parent star – so close, in fact, that all their orbits could fit within the distance between the stars. Mercury and our sun. It’s puzzling that this new part of the cosmos, unlike our … Read more