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NASA’s Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet...
NASA’s Kepler Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates
As of January 7, 2013 Kepler has discovered 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars and among the 461 new discoveries, 4 of them are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their sun’s habitable zone.
“The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood.”
Kepler discovers these candidates by measuring the brightness of the Sun as a planet passes by it or transits the star causing it to dim slightly. These candidates need additional, follow up, observations to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, there were 33 candidates that were confirmed as planets, now there are 105.
“The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits— orbital periods similar to Earth’s,” said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at Ames. “It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when.”
