TRAPPIST-1e is a rocky, close-to-Earth-sized exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone around the ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 approximately 40 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/exoplanets/trappist-1e-most-habitable-exoplanet/.

Based on our experience here on Earth, we know life here to be tenacious and ubiquitous. Even in the harshest climates, if we look hard enough, we can usually find some sort of life there. We are hoping the same is true on worlds around other stars, and recent research has begun looking into the question of whether life on other worlds could exist in the most inhospitable environs: the terminator zone of tidally locked planets. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/science/exoplanet-terminator-zones/.

Finding habitable worlds has been a driving passion since we first learned there were other planets out there, and to find them, we are going to need a dedicated instrument that does nothing else but tries to locate and characterize them. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/science/habitable-worlds-observatory/.

Human beings have discovered over five thousand five hundred exoplanets. Over 80 percent of them have orbits shorter than 50 days which would place them at over twice as close to their star as Mercury is to the Sun. Some are even closer. Recent observations from TESS however have found one with an orbit of 82 days and another measured in hundreds of days. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/discoveries/TESS-finds-long-period-exoplanet/.

We know surprisingly little about Proxima Centauri b, but astronomers have just confirmed that it is not a transiting exoplanet. Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/discoveries/proxima-centauri-b-not-transiting-exoplanet/.

Move over TRAPPIST-1, there a new system that is just as exciting. TOI-700 is a system of four rocky, Earth-sized worlds and some might be habitable Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/exoplanets/many-worlds-toi-700/.

Here is a planet that is so dark that it reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it. How can a planet be so black? What makes it glow like a burning ember? And what kind of weather does it have? Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/exoplanets/tres2b-planet-reflects-no-light/.

Most of the 5000 exoplanets discovered so far have been found using methods that don’t actually see the planet at all. Brightness dimmings and star wobbles only get us so far. They limit our ability to study them in detail and astronomers are working on gigantic starshades to resolve planets directly Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/science/starshades-find-exoplanets/.

The next big milestone in our study of exoplanets is a telescope that can see beyond the limits of our eyes, beyond the boundaries of our solar system, beyond the frontiers of our knowledge. A telescope that can reveal the secrets of the stars and the mysteries of the planets. A telescope that can take us closer to finding another home in the cosmos Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/science/nancy-grace-roman-space-telescope-exoplanets/.

A team of astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to study the exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 c, which is one of seven rocky planets orbiting an ultracool red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. The team found that the planet's atmosphere, if it exists at all, is extremely thin Show Notes Available at https://exoplanetradio.com/discoveries/jwst-trappist1c-no-thick-atmosphere/.