Discovery

The official EPSC-DPS press-release about our latest discovery on the analysis of the moons of (93) Minerva and understanding of the composition of this main-belt triple system is finally out. Two years ago, I reported on this blog the discovery of those moons. Let's confess that I am glad to have finally solved secrets of this enigmatical main-belt asteroid. It was one of the most difficult multiple systems to characterize and understand due to its strangely spherical shape. Hopefully it will give birth to follow-up works... read more ❯

Kepler-16 is another great discovery coming from the Kepler telescope, the 10th NASA Discovery mission which is devoted to finding Earth-size exoplanets by monitoring variations of brightness due to transit. Today the Kepler team found a circumbinary exoplanet, an exoplanet orbiting a binary star system. Did they find Tatooine? In the large 105 deg2 field of view of the Kepler spacecraft, ~156,000 stars are being almost continuously observed by the 0.95m telescope. In 2010, the star number KIC... read more ❯