NASA Exoplanet Science Institute Headlines
NExScI is the science operations and analysis center for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. We provide tools and archives for the exoplanet community, administer the Sagan program of fellowships and workshops, and support the Keck Interferometer and administration of the NASA Keck telescope time.
2012 Sagan Summer Workshop on Working with Exoplanet Light Curves
The 2012 Sagan Summer Workshop on Working with Exoplanet Light Curves will be held July 23-27, 2012 on the Caltech campus. Visit the website for preliminary information.
NASA's Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest Exoplanets
A team led by NExScI scientist John Johnson used data from NASA's Kepler mission to discover the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. Click here for the press release.
Exoplanet Motion Seen by Sagan/Michelson Fellows
Former Michelson Fellow Remi Soummer leads a team, including Sagan Fellow Laurent Pueyo, that has re-examined Hubble Space Telescope data from 1998 to find visual evidence for two of the four planets orbiting HR8799. Finding visual evidence for two of these planets in the 1998 Hubble data gives astronomers a time machine for comparing much earlier orbital motion data to more recent observations. Click here for the press release.Billions of Planets
NExScI scientist Dr. Stephen Kane co-authored a paper which appeared in the January issue of Nature that announced the discovery that the Milky Way galaxy contains at least 100 billion planets from statistical studies of microlensing events. The study further shows that small terrestrial-sized planets are more common than large Jovian-sized planets. Click here for the NASA press release.