Almost all the exoplanets we know have been detected in evolved stellar systems, places where the protoplanetary disk has dissipated and the planets around the star can be observed. Seeing inside a disk in formation is tricky business, though prominent studies at stars like Beta Pictoris have told us much about the evolution of these disks as planets do begin to emerge. But just how common are disks with ring and gap structures? Do all such disks produce planets? We're beginning to learn more as instruments like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) continue to be used to examine infant systems. Many of these show disks that are uniform in appearance, lacking discernible features like rings or gaps. Others are brighter, marked by concentric rings with separations that imply planet formation. It’s natural enough that early efforts have been devoted to brighter disks with their suggestion of planetary activity. Image: Until recently, protoplanetary disks were believed to be smooth,...

You would think that helium, being the second most common element in the universe, would have been detected in exoplanet atmospheres long ago. A major constituent of the atmosphere at both Jupiter and Saturn, helium seems a natural because planets form from dust and gas from previous stellar generations, but it turns out that the first helium detection on an exoplanet occurred only this year, in a study led by Jessica Spake (University of Exeter). The planet in question, WASP-107b, yielded its helium signature in data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, a detection that showed clear signs of a comet-like tail forming as the planet's atmosphere escaped. Note the space-based detection: It's significant because Earth's atmosphere is opaque to the ultraviolet light the atoms in such an eroding atmosphere absorb. Could we make this kind of fine-grained study from the surface of the Earth? It turns out there's a way: Helium in its long-lived metastable state (as compared to its ground...

We'd like to know a lot more than we do about how planets create magnetic fields. After all, a major motivation for exoplanet research (though hardly the only one) is to find out whether there is other life in the universe. A magnetic field can protect planetary atmospheres from the effects of the host star's stellar wind, a stream of charged particles that could disrupt life's formation. Planets in close orbits of a central star are going to be particularly vulnerable. But if protecting a planetary surface as well as keeping its atmosphere intact are powerful factors in understanding its evolution, learning more about planetary magnetic fields isn't going to be easy. Consider a new paper from François Soubiran (École Normale Supérieure, Lyon) and Burkhard Militzer (UC-Berkeley). They're digging into the question of magnetic fields on super-Earths, in this case planets up to three times the mass of our own world. The scientists believe that magnetic fields could emerge here,...

As the exoplanet hunt deepens, we're seeing how research efforts build upon each other, and how the findings of one investigation play into the planning for another. Kepler candidate planets, for example, have been confirmed using ground-based telescopes in radial velocity investigations, giving an independent check that the putative world is really there. TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) will find planets that refine the target list for the James Webb Space Telescope, with extremely large telescope technology already in the wings. What we sometimes forget is that this collaborative effort has already built up a healthy momentum. Having maxed out Kepler (and K2 was an outstanding rehabilitation of a damaged spacecraft), the operations of TESS will focus on bright, nearby stars. The momentum of TESS and its contributions to the upcoming JWST should remind us that we then have the European Space Agency's CHEOPS (CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite) mission queuing up for...

It's a long name, but with the successful arrival of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) lander on Mars, we now go to work on the planet's deep interior. With Centauri Dreams' deep space perspective, my thoughts quickly turn to other stellar systems. We've all seen how hard it is to land on Mars, and have looked up into the night sky to find the ruddy pinprick that marks its naked eye presence. Given our Solar System's scale, the task of getting humans to Mars looms as a major challenge. Image: Who can resist the first clear photo from a Mars mission? Not me. Credit: NASA. But suppose we were on a planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Here we have roughly Earth-sized planets packed into tight proximity around the parent red dwarf. TRAPPIST-1b is at 0.011 AU, while TRAPPIST-1c is at 0.015 AU. Even the most distant from the star, TRAPPIST-1h, orbits at 0.062 AU, so that these seven worlds are all closer to the host than Mercury in our...

Some relatives of a friend recently made me realize how routine exoplanet discoveries have become to the public. These are anything but astronomy buffs, but they know that planets can be found without ever being seen. My acquaintances may not understand radial velocity or transits to any high degree, but they accept that the methods are there and have proven reliable. "Someday," said one, "I guess we'll actually see one of these planets." The image below came as a surprise when I showed it to them. Here we do see a planetary system, four actual planets around the star HR 8799 and not just jiggles in Doppler signals or dips in a lightcurve. For me, what's astonishing here is not only that we can see planets despite their proximity to the host, but that we've accomplished this with telescopes on the ground. Adaptive optics -- correcting for turbulence in the atmosphere that would distort an astronomical image, using a guide star as a reference -- is the tool that is opening a new era...

Even today, I can well understand the reaction that Dennis Conti had when confronted with the prospect of finding a planet around another star with nothing more than an amateur instrument. Conti, who founded and now chairs the Exoplanet Section of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, was a newcomer to the transit method just a few years ago. "I thought, there's no way for someone with a backyard telescope to detect a planet going around a distant star," he says, looking back from the vantage of one now immersed in such observations. My boyhood 3-inch reflector was not a backyard instrument -- too many trees back there. So it became a front-yard telescope. Absent the technological innovations of the past five decades, I could only imagine vast instruments for studying objects around other stars. The transit method in exoplanet detection was a long way off, but the idea of seeing not a planet itself but a change in starlight as the planet crossed the face of its host...

The detection of a planet around Barnard’s Star really hits home for me. No, this isn’t a habitable world, but the whole topic of planets around this star has resonance for those of us who remember the earliest days of exoplanet study, which could be extended back to Peter van de Kamp’s work at Swarthmore’s Sproul Observatory in Pennsylvania. The astronomer thought he had found evidence for a 1.6 Jupiter mass planet in a 4.4 AU orbit there, based on what he interpreted as telltale wobbles in photographic plates of the star taken between 1916 and 1962. This work, ending in the early 1970s, turned out to be the result of errors in the instrument van de Kamp was using, but the buzz about possible planets around Barnard’s Star had been sufficient to create a small crest of enthusiasm for exoplanet studies in general. The British Interplanetary Society saw in Barnard’s Star a target worth investigating, and designed their Daedalus star probe around a mission there. In any case, van de...