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17 July 2024: Using the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope at the U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF NOIRLab, astronomers have discovered the extreme orbit of an exoplanet that’s on its way to becoming a hot Jupiter. This exoplanet not only follows one of the most drastically stretched-out orbits of all known transiting exoplanets but is also orbiting its star backwards, lending insight into the mystery of how hot Jupiters evolve.

20 October 2022: A gas giant exoplanet with the density of a marshmallow has been detected in orbit around a cool red dwarf star by a suite of instruments, including the NASA-funded NEID radial-velocity instrument on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. The planet, named TOI-3757 b, is the fluffiest gas giant planet ever discovered around this type of star.

28 June 2021: Some exoplanet searches could be missing nearly half of the Earth-sized planets around other stars. New findings from a team using the international Gemini Observatory and the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory suggest that Earth-sized worlds could be lurking undiscovered in binary star systems, hidden in the glare of their parent stars. As roughly half of all stars are in binary systems, this means that astronomers could be missing many Earth-sized worlds.