You know what it’s like. You get a new telescope and need to know where to point it! The bigger the telescope, the more potential targets and the harder the decision! To date, we have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets (5,288 to be exact) with thousands more candidates. With missions like Gaia identifying thousands of … Continue reading "Just Built a Giant, Next Generation Planet Hunting Space Telescope? Here’s Where to Point It"

Astronomers have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more candidates. Missions like Gaia have identified thousands of nearby stellar twins where Earth-like planets could be hiding. Now it’s time to find those other Earths. A new paper filters down millions of candidates into about 1,000 main-sequence stars and wide binaries worth exploring. From these, they identify the 100 best targets and, out of those, the 10 best-known planetary systems.