Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Kepler Finds Five More Exoplanets

Posted by kdawson on from the nice-places-to-visit-but dept.

Arvisp was one of several readers to send news of five new exoplanets discovered by the Kepler space telescope. In addition to the new "hot Jupiters" — the easiest targets to find — Kepler's early data has turned up some oddities, including something that is too hot to be a planet and too small to be a star. And one of the exoplanets is so fluffy that "it has the density of Styrofoam." The real news is that Kepler works as designed, and the scientists running it are fully confident that it will find Earth-like planets in some star's habitable zone, if they are out there to be found. Here is NASA's press release.

3 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Conservative Approach by Greg+Hullender · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They're being extremely conservative here, double-checking every claimed discovery using grround-based telescopes. That's a very sensible way to begin; they'd hate to announce some planets and then have to retract a few later!

    As they get more verified examples under their belts, I expect they'll get a bit bolder. I certainly hope so, anyway. Earth-sized planets will be hard to double-check (Hubble could do it, but nothing on the ground), and large outer planets can't be double-checked at all, since they just make one pass and the next could be decades away.

    --Greg

    1. Re:Conservative Approach by Elder+Entropist · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they need to see two transits to see the complete dip of light and a second for confirmation and orbital period. As the project has been running for six weeks, they have only results for planets that orbit their star in 3 weeks or less. Detecting Earth size planets in the habitable zone could take years before they make two transits. Detecting Earth itself would take 2 years.

  2. If you like data . . . by Greg+Hullender · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Check out these pics of transits from the presentation. http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/414829main_3_transit_light_curves.jpg

    --Greg