NASA is always looking for new planets.
Scientists from the US Space Agency and other institutions around the world are hoping to find habitable exoplanets that could host life or support us in the future.
Nasa uses its Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to make many of its discoveries.
It finds exoplanets, i.e. planets outside our solar system, by measuring whether the light is dimmed when a suspected planet passes a star.
This can be a long and tedious process as multiple transits of a planet may be required to confirm its existence.
The US space agency has found a number of planets in this way and Space.com ten of the most interesting examples highlighted.
Brown dwarf planet
Brown dwarfs are celestial objects that are not technically stars or planets.
This is why it was so unusual when Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope spotted a planet orbiting a brown dwarf called CFHTWIR-Oph 98.
Planet with two suns
Nasa used TESS to discover a planet called TIC 172900988 b.
It is unusual because it orbits two stars.
It’s like the earth orbiting two suns.
Proxima Centauri C
You may have heard of this exoplanet before.
It is popular because it orbits a star called Proxima Centauri, which is closest to our Sun.
Discovered in 2016, it is 4.25 light-years away.
Proxima Centauri C is said to be a rocky exoplanet, but it is not believed to be habitable.
Boiling Super Earth
A super-Earth is a rocky planet several times the size of our own world.
Super-Earth HD 108236 b is more than three times the mass of our planet.
A year on the planet technically lasts 3.8 days because of how fast it orbits its star.
We could not survive on this “super-Earth” because the surface temperature is estimated at 825 degrees Celsius.
A strange orbiter
Exoplanet HD 106906 was discovered in 2013, but Nasa didn’t realize it had such a strange orbit until 2020.
The planet is about 68 billion miles from its star.
This means that a year on the planet is like 15,000 Earth years.
New find
The exoplanet OGLE-2019-BLG-0960 b was sighted just last year.
It is a rocky planet and is about 1.4 to 3.1 times the mass of Earth.
Deep in space
The next unusual exoplanet on the list has actually been discovered in another galaxy.
Many exoplanets are found in the Milky Way, but the planet M51-ULS-1b was found in the Whirlpool galaxy in 2020.
It’s 28 million light-years away, so we won’t be visiting any time soon.
Wobbly Planet
The exoplanet TVLM 513B was only spotted because of its tiny wobble.
Scientists used a method called astrometry, which uses very precise measurements, to detect orbiting planets.
hell of Earth
The exoplanet GJ 367 b was announced in December 2021.
It orbits its star in just eight hours and its daytime temperature is said to be 1,500 °C.
Earth-sized exoplanet
This Earth-sized exoplanet was discovered in 2015.
You would not want to live on planet GJ 1132.
Nasa’s Hubble Space Telescope indicates it has a brutal secondary atmosphere containing cyanide and methane.
This story originally appeared on The sun and is reproduced here with permission.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/23/nasa-uncovers-10-alien-and-unique-planets/ NASA discovers 10 alien planets on a mission to find one Earth-like