Protoplanetary disks offer an opportunity to learn about the processes by which planetary systems form and evolve. Images of these young systems also enable us to study, by analogy, the formation of our own Solar System, in which the common orbital plane of the...
I sat down on my third flight of the day, and the last that I would be taking to the big island of Hawaii on my way to the Mauna Kea observatories. The passenger with the seat adjacent to mine followed and sat down. My step-mom was a flight attendant, so flying is...
We know of a lot of exoplanets. Most, though, we know of only by indirect means – typically via the planet occulting some of the starlight during an eclipse or changing the star’s velocity due to the planet’s own gravity. As of today (June 29, 2016) the exoplanet...
