1. Exoplanets, Near and Far
It’s been another good year for exoplanets, as the Kepler mission entered its extended mission with 105 confirmed planets under its belt. A different group of researchers, working with data from a telescope in Chile, found a planet orbiting our closest stellar neighbor – Alpha Centauri. The planet speeds around its star at a distance of just 6 million kilometers; for comparison, mercury only gets as close as 46 million kilometers to our Sun.
Image: An artist's impression of a small planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our solar system. (Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)