There are about 4433 exoplanets in the latest catalogs. Their radii have generally been measured by knowing the radius of their host star and then closely fitting the lightcurves as the planet transits across the face of the star. The radius of the host star is thus a key parameter and latest data release of the Gaia mission has enabled astronomers to improve the accuracy of stellar properties in its catalog very significantly – to a precision in radius of about 8 percent—for nearly […]

The line that separates stars from brown dwarfs may soon be clearer thanks to new work led by Carnegie's Serge Dieterich. Published by the Astrophysical Journal, his team's findings demonstrate that brown dwarfs can be more massive than astronomers previously thought. […]

An international team of astronomers has discovered a new eclipsing binary system composed of an M-dwarf orbiting a main sequence star. The transiting dwarf star exhibits the so-called relativistic beaming effect. The finding is reported in a paper published August 20 on the arXiv pre-print repository. […]

The vast majority of lemur species are on the edge of extinction, experts warn. But not every lemur species faces a grim future. There may be as many as 1.3 million white-fronted brown lemurs still in the wild, for example, and mouse lemurs may number more than 2 million, a Duke-led study has shown. […]

New work from Carnegie's Jonathan Gagné and the American Museum of Natural History's Jacqueline Faherty identified nearly a thousand potential members and 31 confirmed members of stellar associations—stars of similar ages and compositions that are drifting together through space—in our own corner of the Milky Way. Their work, published in the Astrophysical Journal, could help astronomers understand the evolution of stars and the properties of future exoplanet discoveries. […]