A new study by researchers at Penn State and Brigham Young University provides the most accurate estimate of the frequency that planets that are similar to Earth in size and in distance from their host star occur around stars similar to our sun.
A team of astronomers has announced the likely discovery of a highly obscured black hole existing only 850 million years after the Big Bang, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is the first evidence for a cloaked black hole at such an early time.
Undergraduate and graduate astronomy students studying the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) are being exposed to opportunities to conduct research outside of the classroom and make contributions to this growing field.
New research led by Penn State astronomers improves understanding of why very large planets called super-Earths, with small, quick orbits, form so close to their host stars.
Data recorded by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of a neutron star as it passed through a dense patch of stellar wind emanating from its massive companion star provide valuable insight about the structure and composition of stellar winds.
A report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine sets the stage for Penn State's Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds to expand its role in NASA's exoplanetary science initiatives.
Chris Palma, teaching professor of astronomy and astrophysics, has been honored with the 2018 C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching by the Eberly College of Science Alumni Society.
An unusual infrared emission detected by the Hubble Space Telescope from a nearby neutron star could indicate that the pulsar has features never before seen. The observation could help astronomers better understand the evolution of neutron stars.
Joseph Masiero, a staff scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will give a free presentation titled "You Can't Make a Solar System without Breaking a Few Asteroids" at 7:30 p.m. April 10 in 100 Thomas Building at University Park. The event is part of the 2017-18 Friedman Lecture Series in Astronomy.
Penn State researchers will participate in a new international multilaboratory and multiuniversity collaboration that harnesses the unusual characteristics of the elusive subatomic particles known as antineutrinos for nuclear nonproliferation.
NASA will launch a suborbital sounding rocket carrying a Penn State-led experiment to test a newly developed X-ray spectrograph and study the X-rays from a supernova remnant in the Milky Way galaxy.
The growth of the biggest black holes in the universe is outrunning the growth of the galaxies they inhabit, according to a new study led by researchers at Penn State.
For the first time, a science experiment has measured Earth's ability to absorb neutrinos — the smaller-than-an-atom particles that zoom throughout space and through us by the trillions every second at nearly the speed of light.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has announced a $16 million grant to support the next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) — a project including Penn State scientists that is one of the most successful and influential efforts to map the universe in the history of astronomy.
Astronomers at Penn State have used the Hubble Space Telescope to find a blistering-hot giant planet outside our solar system where the atmosphere "snows" titanium dioxide — the active ingredient in sunscreen. This discovery, and other observations made by the Penn State team, provide insight into the complexity of weather and atmospheric composition on exoplanets, and may someday be useful for gauging the habitability of Earth-size planets.
