Far Out! Kepler Scope Finds Five ‘Exoplanets’

January 4, 2010 — NASA's Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system. Members of the Kepler science team announced the discoveries today during a news briefing at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. "These observations contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets," said William Borucki, the mission’s science principal investigator of NASA's Ames Research Center. "The discoveries also show that our science instrument is working well.” Known as "hot Jupiters" because of their high masses and extreme temperatures, the new exoplanets range in size from similar to Neptune to larger than Jupiter. They have orbits ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 days. Estimated temperatures of the planets range from 2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than molten lava and much too hot for life as we know it. All five of the exoplanets orbit stars hotter and larger than the sun. Launched from Florida on March 6, 2009, the Kepler mission continuously and simultaneously observes more than 150,000 stars. Kepler's science instrument, or photometer, already has measured hundreds of possible planet signatures that are being analyzed. While many of these signatures are likely to be something other than a planet, such as small stars orbiting larger stars, ground-based observatories have confirmed the existence of the five exoplanets. Kepler looks for the signatures of planets by measuring dips in the brightness of stars. When planets cross in front of their stars as seen from Earth, they periodically block the starlight. The size of the planet can be derived from the size of the dip. Kepler will continue science operations until at least November 2012. According to Borucki, Kepler's continuous and long-duration search should greatly improve scientists' ability to determine the distributions of planet size and orbital period in the future. "Today's discoveries are a significant contribution to that goal," Borucki said. "The Kepler observations will tell us whether there are many stars with planets that could harbor life, or whether we might be alone in our galaxy."

An artist’s rendering of the Kepler space telescope. Illustration credit: NASA An artist's concept shows a cloudy Jupiter-like planet that orbits very close to its fiery hot star. Illustration credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC) A slide from the American Astronomical Society meeting. Credit: NASA

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