Researchers report the discovery of a Saturn-sized exoplanet orbiting two M-dwarf stars, which are smaller and cooler than ...

Astronomers have, for the first time, found a planet orbiting a binary star system using microlensing. Gravitational lensing is a technique that made its name by aiding in the discovery of galaxies.

Once found, the microlensing measurements would help in determining a number of properties, such as the planet’s mass and distance, how it sits in relation to its star, and its galactic position. In ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have made independent confirmations of an exoplanet orbiting far from its central star. The planet was discovered through a ...

Gravitational microlensing is a transient but powerful phenomenon that occurs when a foreground mass – such as a star or a planetary system – temporarily magnifies the light from a more distant ...

The abundance of low-mass compact objects, at or below the hydrogen-burning mass limit of 0.08M ⊙ (where M ⊙ is the solar mass), remains an open question. This abundance has implications for such ...

Some galaxies pump out vast amounts of energy from a very small volume of space, typically not much bigger than our own solar system. The cores of these galaxies, so called Active Galactic Nuclei or ...

Astrophysicists have discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing -- an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of ...