Tag Archive for 'Microlensing'

An artist’s impression of a super-Neptune exoplanet orbiting a low-mass star near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, Caltech-IPAC.

Astronomers May Have Discovered Fastest-Moving Exoplanet System Ever Seen

Feb 11, 2025 by News Staff

The candidate planetary system, detected with the microlensing method, is thought to move at least 540 km per second (1.2 million mph). An artist’s impression...

An artist’s impression of an Earth-like planet in an orbit around a white dwarf. Image credit: Adam Makarenko.

Earth-Mass Exoplanet Found Orbiting Distant White Dwarf

Sep 26, 2024 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Keck II 10-m telescope have discovered evidence for an Earth-mass planet and a brown dwarf orbiting a white dwarf star. The planet...

This image shows how microlensing was used to measure the mass of the white dwarf LAWD 37. The inset box plots how the dwarf passed in front of a background star in 2019. The wavy blue line traces the dwarf’s apparent motion across the sky as seen from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Peter McGill, UC Santa Cruz, IoA / Kailash Sahu, STScI / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Astronomers Directly Measure Mass of Isolated White Dwarf

Feb 2, 2023 by News Staff

In November 2019, the nearby single, isolated white dwarf LAWD 37 aligned closely with a distant background source and caused a so-called microlensing...

This Webb image shows the highly-magnified red supergiant candidate Quyllur (white, central circle). Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / Diego et al., arXiv: 2210.06514.

Webb Spots Possible Red Supergiant Star in Early Universe

Nov 2, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Nicknamed Quyllur, the newly-detected red supergiant candidate is so far away that its light has taken 10.7 billion years to reach Earth. This Webb image...

The newly-discovered lensed star in the Abell 2744 galaxy-cluster field. Image credit: Chen et al., arXiv: 2207.11658.

Webb Detects Blue Supergiant Star in Early Universe

Sep 1, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The newly-discovered blue supergiant is much hotter than the Sun, and existed when the Universe was about 2.6 billion years old. Left panel shows the color...

The star-filled sky in this Hubble photo lies in the direction of the Galactic center. The light from stars is monitored to see if any change in their apparent brightness is caused by a foreground object drifting in front of them. The warping of space by the interloper would momentarily brighten the appearance of a background star, an effect called gravitational lensing. One such event, OB110462, is shown in the four close-up frames at the bottom. The arrow points to a star that momentarily brightened, as first captured by Hubble in August 2011. This was caused by a foreground black hole drifting in front of the star, along our line of sight. The star brightened and then subsequently faded back to its normal brightness as the black hole passed by. Because a black hole doesn’t emit or reflect light, it cannot be directly observed. But its unique thumbprint on the fabric of space can be measured through these so-called microlensing events. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / K. Sahu, STScI / J. DePasquale, STScI.

Hubble Detects Free-Floating Compact Object 5,000 Light-Years Away

Jun 13, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have for the first time discovered what may be an isolated stellar-mass black hole using the astrometric microlensing technique. They estimate...

An artist’s rendition of the MOA-2010-BLG-477Lb exoplanet and its white-dwarf host. Image credit: W.M. Keck Observatory / Adam Makarenko.

Jupiter-Mass Exoplanet Found Orbiting White Dwarf

Oct 15, 2021 by News Staff

Using a technique called gravitational microlensing, which occurs when a star close to Earth momentarily aligns with a more distant star, astronomers have...

An artist’s conception of exoplanets in a dense star cluster. Image credit: Michael Bachofner.

Milky Way Galaxy’s Bulge Could Have Planetary Systems, Too

Aug 30, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Milky Way’s bulge is the ancient and crowded central hub of our Galaxy. It contains about one quarter of the total stellar mass of the Milky Way...

An artist’s impression of a free-floating exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Kepler Data Reveal Four Earth-Mass Free-Floating Exoplanets

Jul 6, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission, astronomers have detected four new microlensing events that are consistent with free-floating planets of similar...

An artist’s impression of a gravitational microlensing event by a free-floating exoplanet. Image credit: Jan Skowron / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw.

Astronomers Discover Smallest Free-Floating Exoplanet Yet

Oct 30, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers from the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) project have discovered a Mars- to Earth-mass free-floating, or rogue, planet through...

An artist’s impression of a free-floating exoplanet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, Caltech-IPAC.

Free-Floating Exoplanets May Outnumber Stars in Milky Way

Aug 25, 2020 by News Staff

Free-floating, or rogue, exoplanets — free-floating planetary-mass objects that do not orbit a star and instead travel through space — could...

An artist’s impression of a super-Earth exoplanet. Image credit: NASA.

Very Distant Super-Earth Discovered Through Microlensing

May 12, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth exoplanet orbiting a dwarf star or a brown dwarf around 7,580 parsecs (24,723 light-years) from Earth. An artist’s...

X-ray image of the gravitational lens system SDSS J1004+4112 taken by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory; the central red extended emission is from the hot gas in the foreground lens galaxy cluster and the four blue point sources are the lensed images of the background quasar. Image credit: University of Oklahoma.

Free-Floating Planet-Mass Objects are Common in Galaxies

Dec 13, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using a technique called quasar microlensing, a team of astronomers at the University of Oklahoma has detected populations of free-floating planet-mass...

Dai et al used Chandra to measure the spin of five quasars. Gravitational lensing of the light from each of these black holes by an intervening galaxy has created multiple images of each quasar, as shown by these Chandra images of four of the targets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Oklahoma / Dai et al.

Chandra Uses Gravitational Lens to Capture Spinning Black Holes

Jul 5, 2019 by News Staff

By combining the capability of NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory with the power of a natural phenomenon called gravitational lensing, a team of astronomers...

This Hubble image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+223, whose light has taken over 5 billion years to reach us. Highlighted is the position where the Icarus star appeared -- its image magnified by a factor 2,000 by gravitational microlensing. The spiral galaxy in which the star is located can be seen three times on the sky -- multiplied by strong gravitational lensing. Image credit: NASA / ESA / S. Rodney, John Hopkins University / FrontierSN Team / T. Treu, University of California Los Angeles / P. Kelly, University of California Berkeley / GLASS Team / J. Lotz, STScI / Frontier Fields Team / M. Postman, STScI / CLASH Team / Z. Levay, STScI.

Icarus Star: Hubble Spies Most Distant Star Ever Seen

Apr 3, 2018 by News Staff

A blue supergiant star nicknamed Icarus is so far away that its light has taken 9 billion years to reach our planet. It appears to us as it did when the...

Image of the gravitational lens RX J1131-1231, with the foreground elliptical galaxy at the center and four images of the lensed quasar. It is estimated that there are trillions of planets in the lens galaxy. Image credit: University of Oklahoma.

Astronomers Claim to Find Population of Rogue Exoplanets in Distant Galaxy

Feb 2, 2018 by News Staff

Using a quasar microlensing technique, astronomers claim to have found a large population of unbound planets — with masses ranging from Moon to Jupiter...

This artist’s concept shows the Earth-mass exoplanet OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Frozen Earth-Mass Exoplanet Discovered 12,750 Light-Years Away

Apr 28, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Using a planet-hunting technique called gravitational microlensing, astronomers have detected an Earth-mass planet orbiting an ultracool dwarf 12,750 light-years...

Neptune-mass planets like the one shown in this artist’s rendering may be the most common in the icy regions of planetary systems; beyond a certain distance from a young star, water and other substances remain frozen, leading to an abundant population of icy objects that can collide and form the cores of new planets; in the foreground, an icy body left over from this period drifts past the planet. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.

‘Cold Neptunes’ are Common, New Study Says

Dec 16, 2016 by News Staff

A new statistical study of exoplanets found by an innovative technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that so-called ‘cold Neptunes’ are...

This illustration depicts a newly discovered brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Find Brown Dwarf 16,300 Light-Years Away

Nov 11, 2016 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers has spotted a brown dwarf orbiting a K-type dwarf star approximately 16,300 light-years away. The object was discovered...

Astronomers Confirm Existence of Giant Circumbinary Exoplanet 8,000 Light-Years Away

Sep 22, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the existence of a Saturn-mass exoplanet in the binary system OGLE-2007-BLG-349L,...