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XO-3b: Supersized planet or oasis in the 'brown dwarf desert'?

One of the oddest extrasolar planets ever cataloged -- a mammoth orb more than 13 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star in less than four days -- will be unveiled at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu.

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Keywords: xo-3b, supersized, planet, oasis, brown, dwarf, desert, oasi

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1. The star, the dwarf and the planet
   10-19-2006 · EurekAlert!
   Astronomers have detected a new faint companion to the star HD 3651, already known to host a planet. This companion, a brown dwarf, is the faintest known companion of an exoplanet host star imaged directly and one of the faintest T dwarfs detected in the Solar neighbourhood so far. The detection yields important information on the conditions under which planets form.
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2. Brown planetary geologists lend expertise to Mercury mission
   01-11-2008 · EurekAlert!
   When NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its historic flyby of Mercury on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, Brown University students, led by planetary geologist James Head, will be part of the action. At mission headquarters and at Brown, these planetary experts will help analyze images from Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system. Head leads the MESSENGER mission's geology group, overseeing analysis of Mercury's volcanic features and dating rocks on the planet's cratered surface.
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3. Extraterrestrial impact likely source of sudden Ice Age extinctions
   09-24-2007 · EurekAlert!
   What killed the wooly mammoths? An international team of scientists, including Peter Schultz of Brown University, suggests that a comet or meteorite exploded over the planet roughly 12,900 years ago, causing the abrupt climate changes that led to the extinction of the wooly mammoth and other giant prehistoric beasts. Their theory is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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4. The planet, the galaxy and the laser
   08-03-2007 · EurekAlert!
   On the night of July 21, ESO astronomer Yuri Beletsky took images of the night sky above Paranal, the 2600-meter high mountain in the Chilean Atacama Desert home to ESO's Very Large Telescope. The amazing images bear witness to the unique quality of the sky, revealing not only the Milky Way in all its splendour but also the planet Jupiter and the laser beam used at Yepun, one of the 8.2-meter telescopes that make up this extraordinary facility.
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5. A brown dwarf joins the jet-set
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   Jets of matter have been discovered around a very low mass "failed star," mimicking a process seen in young stars. This suggests that these "brown dwarfs" form in a similar manner to normal stars but also thatoutflows are driven out by objects as massive as hundreds of millions of solar masses down to Jupiter-sized objects.
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6. 28 new planets, 7 new brown dwarfs reported by California, Carnegie team
   05-28-2007 · EurekAlert!
   The combined California and Carnegie Planet Search team and Anglo-Australian Planet Search team announced at this week's American Astronomical Society meeting the discovery of 28 new planets outside our solar system, a 12 percent increase in the number of known exoplanets. The bounty of new planets, not to mention seven new brown dwarfs, allows the astronomers to draw conclusions about how planets form and how planet systems evolve.
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7. UCLA's Christopher Russell leads NASA's Dawn Mission, set for July 7 launch
   06-26-2007 · EurekAlert!
   Christopher Russell, UCLA professor of geophysics and space physics, is principal investigator on NASA's Dawn mission to the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Dawn is scheduled to launch July 7 from Cape Canaveral. Dawn will conduct a detailed study of the structure and composition of two of the first bodies formed in our solar system: the "dwarf planet" Ceres and the massive asteroid Vesta.
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8. Ice clouds put mars in the shade
   01-16-2008 · European Space Agency (ESA)
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9. What's a Planet?
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10. A discordant name for a dwarf planet
    10-70-2006 · Science News Online
    The largest known object at the fringes of the solar system, the icy body whose discovery heated up the debate about the nature of planethood, has an apt new name.
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