Keep your eye on the ball” is a motto for many athletes—and for astronomers trying to find Earth-threatening space rocks ...

"In about 1604, Johannes Kepler fitted an ellipse model of ... the speed at which Earth orbits the sun due to the elliptical nature of its orbit." What our ancestors could figure out was the ...

It was not until Johannes Kepler introduced the concept of elliptical orbits that scientists ... exoplanets within the highly eccentric orbit group had 25% more habitable land area for more ...

To find a planet on an orbit similar to our own, Kepler would have to monitor the star for several years to confirm that the dips repeated. Scaled up, that meant that Kepler needed to watch one ...

Scientists work to define a “habitable zone,” which means that if it’s too close to a star, the water heats and evaporates, and too far, it freezes. Also, the atmospheric conditions need to be just ...