With the discovery of thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars, the search for life elsewhere has entered an exciting new phase. So far, most of …
This image shows the stars Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B just above the edge of the cloud tops in Saturn’s atmosphere, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. The two stars are part of the Alpha Centauri triple star system, which is the closest star system to our Solar System, but is still almost 30,000 times farther away from us than Saturn is.
The closest star system to our own Sun may have two Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting it, a new study has shown based on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. If confirmed, the discovery would help to illustrate just how common exoplanets are; data from Kepler and other telescopes has also already shown that the vast majority of stars have exoplanets orbiting them, and the number of exoplanets in our galaxy alone is now thought to number in the billions.
Read MoreTwo Earth-sized exoplanets may exist in closest star system, Hubble observations reveal