What can Earth-sized exoplanets teach scientists about the formation and evolution of exoplanets throughout the cosmos? This is what a recently submitted study hopes to address as an international ...

In a groundbreaking achievement, astronomers have captured a direct image of GJ504b, a distant exoplanet often referred to as ...

On GJ 1214b, this huge temperature swing indicates that the planet's atmosphere can't be just light hydrogen molecules; instead, there has to be something else like water or methane.

Astronomers have finally peered past the clouds on the exoplanet GJ 1214b, a mini-Neptune planet around a star about 40 light-years away. Mini-Neptunes, like a shrunken down version of the ...

"The MIRI instrument was indeed able to see through some of this thick haze, revealing, for the first time, hints of GJ 1214b's atmospheric composition and temperature," said Dr Roman.

Dr Michael Roman, from the University of Leicester, made the observations about the atmospheric conditions on the planet GJ 1214b, which was discovered in 2009.

The planet is known as Gliese 1214b or just GJ 1214b for short. It orbits a star called Gliese 1214, about 48 light-years from Earth.

While studying GJ 1214b, researchers tracked the planet through nearly its entire orbit over the course of about 40 hours, according to NASA. The planet's year takes only 1.6 Earth days.

It looks like GJ 1214b might have an atmosphere that's made mostly out of water." That pushes this planet into "a category of its own in a way that was never certain before," says Kreidberg.