Kepler space telescope spots five Earth-sized planets in our galaxy

NASA Finds Earth-size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System




MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Tuesday, Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them. This is known as a transit.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets.

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[Kvnblmr]

That sucks, cause we won't be here to see and/or experience life on other planets. Galileo would've loved to have seen what we have now. I just wish space travel was possible / available to us now! Damn!

[BlueBlaBle]

@MrEndous That does not make these people fools. Plus, maybe god never said there weren't people out there. Maybe someone wrote it down wrong! Anyway, god created people, and this is how they turned out, i guess he'll just have to deal with it (no disrespect god)

[007feedback]

@MrEndous But the Holly Father in the Vatican , just said , that His Holiness would baptize the aliens !! Look it up !!

[MrEndous]

Fool we still cannot take good control of this planet so dont talk about civilising planets with people and aliens. there is nobody out there as according to the Bible. God created us , not the theory of big bang. Makes no sense at all. If u dont believe in Jesus as your Savior and Creator but the big bang, You will go to Hell!!!! See for yourself when you face God and then you will remember to know who I am to write this to you. U will probably see and know me when you are in hell.

[MrEndous]

I wonder how NASA could find these infinitely earth sized planets from 1000 light years away. I doubt that is true because NASA technological telescope has not been developed in a very light-speed machine to view the planets yet. So there is no use of claiming that there is extraterrestrial planets detected within habitable zone. We simply cant reach there until Jesus Christ comes to pick us up and takes us there. FOOLS!!!

[lilclark15]

I Hope they do and find a civilisation that"s like ours but made better choices rather than dumb ass humans like us that rant a rage on about WAR MONEY and OIL! If we get there and say get the hell off our planet before you destroy ours too!!! lol

[kingplatoedwinkaku]

this guy loves himself, what a jackass... hey thanks for the telescope tho im blown away. i suppose the greatest discovery of all time is an excuse for grandure

[happinesson]

High tech telescope! but i guess we don't need to consider another planet to live in. We need change of heart and mind to preserve the planet earth. Taking care of what we have here on earth is a lot cheaper than to send astronauts to the outer space just to check if there is other planet we can live on.

[Ericrestes1]

@xTROJANxX Yeah that makes perfect sense :P

[halolIlmao0]

Universe is Enternal.