Friday, August 05, 2016

Astronomers Catalog Planets That May Be Earthlike

The artistic concept of Kepler-186f is the result of scientists and artists collaborating to imagine the appearance of these distant worlds. 
Image credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech.  › Full image and caption


Using public data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, astronomers have catalogued the planet candidates that may be similar to our third rock from the sun. The tabulation of candidates will help astronomers focus their research efforts in the search for life.

The analysis, led by Stephen Kane, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University in California, highlights 20 candidates in the Kepler trove that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their star in the conservative habitable zone -- the range of distances where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. Of these 20 candidates, nine have been previously investigated and determined to be verified planets, including notables like Kepler-62f, Kepler-186f, Kepler-283c, Kepler-296f and Kepler-442b.

The results are presented in a paper accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. For a listing of the candidates and their properties, the paper can be reviewed at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.00620.

NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder.


News Media Contact

Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425

elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982

michele.johnson@nasa.gov

Written by Michele Johnson



Source: JPL-Caltech