NASA's K2 Finds Newborn Exoplanet Around Young Star

When a planet such as K2-33b passes in front of its host star, it blocks some of the star's light. Observing this periodic dimming, called a transit, from continual monitoring of a star's brightness, allows astronomers to detect planets outside our solar system with a high degree of certainty. This Neptune-sized planet orbits a star that is between 5 and 10 million years old. In addition to the planet, the star hosts a disk of planetary debris, seen as a bright ring encircling the star. Youtube

K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date. It makes a complete orbit around its star in about five days. 
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

This image shows the K2-33 system, and its planet K2-33b, compared to our own solar system. The planet has a five-day orbit, whereas Mercury orbits our sun in 88 days. The planet is also nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the sun. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers have discovered the youngest fully formed exoplanet ever detected. The discovery was made using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and its extended K2 mission, as well as the W. M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun.

The newfound planet, K2-33b, is a bit larger than Neptune and whips tightly around its star every five days. It is only 5 to 10 million years old, making it one of a very few newborn planets found to date.

"Our Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old," said Trevor David of Caltech in Pasadena, lead author of a new study published online June 20, 2016, in the journal Nature. "By comparison, the planet K2-33b is very young. You might think of it as an infant." David is a graduate student working with astronomer Lynne Hillenbrand, also of Caltech.

Planet formation is a complex and tumultuous process that remains shrouded in mystery. Astronomers have discovered and confirmed roughly 3,000 exoplanets so far; however, nearly all of them are hosted by middle-aged stars, with ages of a billion years or more. For astronomers, attempting to understand the life cycles of planetary systems using existing examples is like trying to learn how people grow from babies to children to teenagers, by only studying adults.

"The newborn planet will help us better understand how planets form, which is important for understanding the processes that led to the formation of Earth," said co-author Erik Petigura of Caltech.

The first signals of the planet's existence were measured by K2. The telescope's camera detected a periodic dimming of the light emitted by the planet's host star, a sign that an orbiting planet could be regularly passing in front of the star and blocking the light. Data from the Keck Observatory validated that the dimming was indeed caused by a planet, and also helped confirm its youthful age.

Infrared measurements from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showed that the system's star is surrounded by a thin disk of planetary debris, indicating that its planet-formation phase is wrapping up. Planets form out of thick disks of gas and dust, called protoplanetary disks, that surround young stars.

"Initially, this material may obscure any forming planets, but after a few million years, the dust starts to dissipate," said co-author Anne Marie Cody, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "It is during this time window that we can begin to detect the signatures of youthful planets with K2." 

A surprising feature in the discovery of K2-33b is how close the newborn planet lies to its star. The planet is nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun, making it hot. While numerous older exoplanets have been found orbiting very tightly to their stars, astronomers have long struggled to understand how more massive planets like this one wind up in such small orbits. Some theories propose that it takes hundreds of millions of years to bring a planet from a more distant orbit into a close one -- and therefore cannot explain K2-33b, which is quite a bit younger.

The science team says there are two main theories that may explain how K2-33b wound up so close to its star. It could have migrated there in a process called disk migration that takes hundreds of thousands of years. Or, the planet could have formed "in situ" -- right where it is. The discovery of K2-33b therefore gives theorists a new data point to ponder.

"After the first discoveries of massive exoplanets on close orbits about 20 years ago, it was immediately suggested that they could absolutely not have formed there, but in the past several years, some momentum has grown for in situ formation theories, so the idea is not as wild as it once seemed," said David.

"The question we are answering is: Did those planets take a long time to get into those hot orbits, or could they have been there from a very early stage? We are saying, at least in this one case, that they can indeed be there at a very early stage," he said.

Ames 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.

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

Felicia Chou
NASA Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0257
felicia.chou@nasa.gov

Written by Whitney Clavin
Editor: Tony Greicius

Source: NASA/Kepler and K2

New Planet Is Largest Discovered That Orbits Two Suns

Artist's impression of the simultaneous stellar eclipse and planetary transit events on Kepler-1647. 

Credits: Lynette Cook

Comparison of the relative sizes of several Kepler circumbinary planets. Kepler-1647 b is substantially larger than any of the previously known circumbinary planets. 

Credits: Lynette Cook

A bird's eye view comparison of the orbits of the Kepler circumbinary planets. Kepler-1647 b's orbit, shown in red, is much larger than the other planets (shown in gray). For comparison, the Earth's orbit is shown in blue. Credits: B. Quarles

If you cast your eyes toward the constellation Cygnus, you’ll be looking in the direction of the largest planet yet discovered around a double-star system. It’s too faint to see with the naked eye, but a team led by astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and San Diego State University (SDSU) in California, used NASA's Kepler Space Telescope to identify the new planet, Kepler-1647b.

The discovery was announced today in San Diego at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. The research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal with Veselin Kostov, a NASA Goddard postdoctoral fellow, as lead author.

Kepler-1647 is 3,700 light-years away and approximately 4.4 billion years old, roughly the same age as Earth. The stars are similar to the sun, with one slightly larger than our home star and the other slightly smaller. The planet has a mass and radius nearly identical to that of Jupiter, making it the largest transiting circumbinary planet ever found.

Planets that orbit two stars are known as circumbinary planets, or sometimes “Tatooine” planets, after Luke Skywalker’s home world in “Star Wars.” Using Kepler data, astronomers search for slight dips in brightness that hint a planet might be passing or transiting in front of a star, blocking a tiny amount of the star’s light.

“But finding circumbinary planets is much harder than finding planets around single stars,” said SDSU astronomer William Welsh, one of the paper’s coauthors. “The transits are not regularly spaced in time and they can vary in duration and even depth.”

“It’s a bit curious that this biggest planet took so long to confirm, since it is easier to find big planets than small ones,” said SDSU astronomer Jerome Orosz, a coauthor on the study. “But it is because its orbital period is so long.”

The planet takes 1,107 days – just over three years – to orbit its host stars, the longest period of any confirmed transiting exoplanet found so far. The planet is also much further away from its stars than any other circumbinary planet, breaking with the tendency for circumbinary planets to have close-in orbits. Interestingly, its orbit puts the planet with in the so-called habitable zone–the range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet.

Like Jupiter, however, Kepler-1647b is a gas giant, making the planet unlikely to host life. Yet if the planet has large moons, they could potentially be suitable for life.

“Habitability aside, Kepler-1647b is important because it is the tip of the iceberg of a theoretically predicted population of large, long-period circumbinary planets,” said Welsh.

Once a candidate planet is found, researchers employ advanced computer programs to determine if it really is a planet. It can be a grueling process.

Laurance Doyle, a coauthor on the paper and astronomer at the SETI Institute, noticed a transit back in 2011. But more data and several years of analysis were needed to confirm the transit was indeed caused by a circumbinary planet. A network of amateur astronomers in the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope "Follow-Up Network” provided additional observations that helped the researchers estimate the planet’s mass.

For more information about the Kepler mission, please see: www.nasa.gov/kepler

A preprint of the paper can be found at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.00189v2

High-resolution artwork can be obtained at: http://go.sdsu.edu/kepler/

Editor: Ashley Morrow

Source: NASA/Kepler anda K2

Kepler-223 System: Clues to Planetary Migration

These animations show approximately 200,000 years of orbital evolution in the Kepler-223 planetary system. The planets’ interactions with the disk of gas and dust in which they formed caused their orbits to shrink toward their star over time at differing rates.YouTube version

Sean Mills (left) and Daniel Fabrycky (right), researchers at the University of Chicago, describe the complex orbital structure of the Kepler-223 system in a new study. Credits: Nancy Wong/University of Chicago

The four planets of the Kepler-223 star system appeared to have little in common with the planets of our own solar system today. But a new study using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope suggests a possible commonality in the distant past. The Kepler-223 planets orbit their star in the same configuration that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may have had in the early history of our solar system, before migrating to their current locations.

"Exactly how and where planets form is an outstanding question in planetary science," said the study's lead author, Sean Mills, a graduate student in astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago in Illinois. "Our work essentially tests a model for planet formation for a type of planet we don't have in our solar system."

The puffy, gaseous planets orbiting Kepler-223, all of which are far more massive than Earth, orbit close to their star. "That's why there's a big debate about how they formed, how they got there and why don't we have an analogous planet in our solar system," Mills said.

Mills and his collaborators used data from Kepler -- its mission is now known as K2 -- to analyze how the four planets block their stars' light and change each other's orbits. This information also gave researchers the planets' sizes and masses. The team performed numerical simulations of planetary migration that generate this system's current architecture, similar to the migration suspected for the solar system's gas giants. These calculations are described in the May 11 Advance Online edition of Nature.

The orbital configuration of our own solar system seems to have evolved since its birth 4.6 billion years ago. The four known planets of the much older Kepler-223 system, however, have maintained a single orbital configuration for far longer.

Astronomers call the planets of Kepler-223 "sub-Neptunes." They likely consist of a solid core and an envelope of gas, and they orbit their star in periods ranging from only seven to 19 days. They are the most common type of planets known in the galaxy, even though there is nothing quite like them around our sun.

Kepler-223's planets also are in resonance, meaning their gravitational influence on each other creates a periodic relationship between their orbits. Planets are in resonance when, for example, every time one of them orbits its sun once, the next one goes around twice. Three of Jupiter's largest moons, where the phenomenon was discovered, display resonances. Kepler-223 is the first time that four planets in an extrasolar system have been confirmed to be in resonance.

"This is the most extreme example of this phenomenon," said study co-author Daniel Fabrycky, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

Formation scenarios

The Kepler-223 system provides alternative scenarios for how planets form and migrate in a planetary system that is different from our own, said study co-author Howard Isaacson, a research astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley, and member of the California Planet Search Team.

"Data from Kepler and the Keck Telescope were absolutely critical in this regard," Isaacson said. Thanks to observations of Kepler-223 and other exoplanetary systems, "We now know of systems that are unlike our sun's solar system, with hot Jupiters, planets closer than Mercury or in between the size of Earth and Neptune, none of which we see in our solar system. Other types of planets are very common."

Some stages of planet formation can involve violent processes. But during other stages, planets can evolve from gaseous disks in a smooth, gentle way, which is probably what the sub-Neptune planets of Kepler-223 did, Mills said.

"We think that two planets migrate through this disk, get stuck and then keep migrating together; find a third planet, get stuck, migrate together; find a fourth planet and get stuck," Mills explained.

That process differs completely from the one that scientists believe led to the formation of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, which likely formed in their current orbital locations.

Earth formed from Mars-sized or moon-sized bodies smacking together, Mills said, in a violent and chaotic process. When planets form this way, their final orbital periods are not near a resonance.

Substantial movement

But scientists suspect that the solar system's larger, more distant planets of today -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- moved around substantially during their formation. They may have been knocked out of resonances that once resembled those of Kepler-223, possibly after interacting with numerous asteroids and small planets (planetesimals).

"These resonances are extremely fragile," Fabrycky said. "If bodies were flying around and hitting each other, then they would have dislodged the planets from the resonance." But Kepler-223's planets somehow managed to dodge this scattering of cosmic bodies.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, 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.

For more information about the Kepler and K2 missions, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

 

Elizabeth Landau
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
elizabeth.landau@jpl.nasa.gov

Michele Johnson
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

Written by Steve Koppes
University of Chicago
773-702-8366
skoppes@uchicago.edu

Editor: Tony Greicius

Source: NASA/Kepler and K2

News Center Supernova Hunting with Supercomputers

This computer simulation shows the debris of a Type Ia supernova (brown) slamming into its companion star (blue) at tens of millions of miles per hour. The interaction produces ultraviolet light that escapes as the supernova shell sweeps over the companion, a signal detected by Swift. Credits: UC Berkeley, Daniel Kasen

 

The graphic depicts a light curve of the newly discovered Type Ia supernova, KSN 2011b, from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. The light curve shows a star's brightness (vertical axis) as a function of time (horizontal axis) before, during and after the star exploded. The white diagram on the right represents 40 days of continuous observations by Kepler. In the red zoom box, the agua-colored region is the expected 'bump' in the data if a companion star is present during a supernova. The measurements remained constant (yellow line) concluding the cause to be the merger of two closely orbiting stars, most likely two white dwarfs. The finding provides the first direct measurements capable of informing scientists of the cause of the blast. Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel

Animation showing a binary star system in which a white dwarf accretes matter from a normal companion star. Matter streaming from the red star accumulates on the white dwarf until the dwarf explodes. With its partner destroyed, the normal star careens into space. This scenario results in what astronomers refer to as a Type Ia supernova.Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Walt Feimer

Astronomers are going gaga over newborn supernova measurements taken by NASA’s Kepler and Swift spacecraft, poring over them in hopes of better understanding what sparks these world-shattering stellar explosions. Scientists are particularly fascinated with Type la supernovae, as they can serve as a lighthouse for measuring the vast distances across space.“Kepler’s unprecedented pre-event supernova observations and Swift’s agility in responding to supernova events have both produced important discoveries at the same time but at very different wavelengths,” says Paul Hertz, Director of Astrophysics. “Not only do we get insight into what triggers a Type Ia supernova, but these data allow us to better calibrate Type Ia supernovae as standard candles, and that has implications for our ability to eventually understand the mysteries of dark energy.”

Type Ia supernovae explode with similar brightness because the exploding object is always a white dwarf, the Earth-sized remnant of a star like the sun. A white dwarf can go supernova by merging with another white dwarf or by pulling too much matter from a nearby companion star, causing a thermonuclear reaction and blowing itself to smithereens.

In studies appearing in Nature on Thursday, Kepler and Swift have found supporting evidence for both star-pulverizing scenarios.

Researchers studying the Kepler data have caught three new and distant supernovae, and the dataset includes measurements taken before the violent explosions even happened. Known for its planet-hunting prowess and its unceasing gaze, the Kepler space telescope's exquisitely precise and frequent observations every 30 minutes have allowed astronomers to turn back the clock and dissect the initial moments of a supernova. The finding provides the first direct measurements capable of informing scientists of the cause of the blast.

"Our Kepler supernova discoveries strongly favor the white dwarf merger scenario, while the Swift study, led by Cao, proves that Type Ia supernovae can also arise from single white dwarfs," said Robert Olling, research associate at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study. "Just as many roads lead to Rome, nature may have several ways to explode white dwarf stars."

To capture the earliest moments of Type Ia explosions, the research team monitored 400 galaxies for two years using Kepler. The team discovered three events, designated KSN 2011b, KSN 2011c and KSN 2012a, with measurements taken before, during and after the explosions.

These early data provide a view into the physical processes that ignite these stellar bombs hundreds of millions of light years away. When a star goes supernova, the explosive burst of energy ejects the star's material at hypersonic velocity, emitting a shock wave in all directions. If a companion star is in the neighborhood, the disruption in the shock wave will be recorded in the data.

Scientists found no evidence of a companion star and concluded the cause to be the collision and merger of two closely orbiting stars, most likely two white dwarfs.

Knowing the distance to a galaxy in the Kepler survey was key to characterizing the Type of supernova uncovered by Olling and his colleagues. To determine the distance, the team turned to the powerful telescopes at the Gemini and the W. M. Keck Observatories atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. These measurements were key for the researchers to conclude that the supernovae they had discovered were that of the Type Ia lighthouse variety.

“The Kepler spacecraft has delivered yet another surprise, playing an unexpected role in supernova science by providing the first well-sampled early time light curves of Type Ia supernovae," said Steve Howell, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "Now in its new mission as K2, the spacecraft will search for more supernovae among many thousands of galaxies."

A separate group of astronomers have also found intriguing data on a different supernova. Led by California Institute of Technology (Caltech) graduate student Yi Cao, a team using Swift has detected an unprecedented flash of ultraviolet (UV) light in the first few days of a Type Ia supernova. Based on computer simulations of supernovae exploding in binary star systems, the researchers think the UV pulse was emitted when the supernova’s blast wave slammed into and engulfed a nearby companion star.

"If Swift had looked just a day or two later, we would have missed the prompt UV flash entirely," said Brad Cenko, a Swift team member at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Thanks to Swift's wavelength coverage and rapid scheduling capability, it is currently the only spacecraft that can regularly make these observations."

According to the analysis, the supernova debris slammed into and swept around its companion star, creating a region of UV emission. The peak temperature exceeded 19,000 degrees Fahrenheit (11,000 degrees Celsius) or about twice the surface temperature of the sun.

The explosion, designated iPTF14atg, was first seen on May 3, 2014, in the galaxy IC 831, located about 300 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. It was discovered through a wide-field robotic observing system known as the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF), a multi-institute collaboration led by the Caltech Optical Observatories in California.

"We saw no evidence of this explosion in images taken the previous night, so we found iPTF14atg when it was only about one day old," Cao said. "Better yet, we confirmed it was a young Type Ia supernova, something we've worked hard designing our system to find."

The team immediately requested follow-up observations from other facilities, including ultraviolet and X-ray observations from NASA's Swift satellite. Although no X-rays were found, a fading spike of UV light was caught by Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope within a few days of the explosion, with no corresponding spike at visible wavelengths. After the flash faded, both UV and visible wavelengths rose together as the supernova brightened.

The UV pulse from iPTF14atg provides strong evidence for the presence of a companion star, but as white dwarfs crashing into each other can also produce supernovae, as demonstrated by the Kepler results, astronomers are working to determine the percentage of supernovae produced by each one.

The scientists add that a better understanding of the differences among Type Ia explosions will help astronomers improve their knowledge of dark energy, a mysterious force that appears to be accelerating cosmic expansion.

Ames 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 Corp. operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Swift blasted into orbit Nov. 20, 2004. Managed by Goddard, the mission is operated in collaboration with Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Virginia. Other partners include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, with additional collaborators in Germany and Japan.

Michele Johnson (Editor)
NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

Lynn Chandler
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-2806
lynn.chandler-1@nasa.gov

Source: NASA's Ames Research Center

Kepler Observes Neptune Dance with Its Moons NASA Ames Research Center

Seventy days worth of solar system observations from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, taken during its reinvented "K2" mission, are highlighted in this sped-up movie. The planet Neptune appears on day 15, followed by its moon Triton, which looks small and faint. Keen-eyed observers can also spot Neptune's tiny moon Nereid at day 24. Neptune is not moving backward but appears to do so because of the changing position of the Kepler spacecraft as it orbits around the sun. Credits: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/J. Rowe

NASA's Kepler spacecraft, known for its planet-hunting prowess of other stars, is also studying solar system objects. In its new K2 mission, Neptune and two of its moons, Triton and Nereid, have been imaged. The movie illustrates 70 days of uninterrupted observation making this one of the longer continuous studies of an outer solar system object.

The movie, based on 101,580 images taken from November 2014 through January 2015 during K2's Campaign 3, reveals the perpetual clockwork of our solar system. The 70-day timespan is compressed into 34 seconds with the number of days noted in the top right corner.

Neptune appears on day 15 but does not travel alone in the video. The small faint object closely orbiting is its large moon Triton, which circles Neptune every 5.8 days. Appearing from the left at day 24, keen-eyed observers can also spot the tiny moon Nereid in its slow 360-day orbit around the planet. A few fast-moving asteroids make cameo appearances in the movie, showing up as streaks across the K2 field of view. The red dots are a few of the stars K2 examines in its search for transiting planets outside of our solar system.

Neptune's atmosphere reflects sunlight creating a bright appearance. The reflected light floods a number of pixels of the spacecraft's on board camera, producing the bright spikes extending above and below the planet. The celestial bodies in the stitched-together images are colored red to represent the wavelength response of the spacecraft's camera. In reality, Neptune is deep blue in color and its moons and the speeding asteroids are light grey while the background stars appear white from a distance.

Relative orbit speeds explain the interesting motion of Neptune and its moons beginning at day 42. Inner planets like Earth orbit more quickly than outer planets like Neptune. In the movie, Neptune’s apparent motion relative to the stationary stars is mostly due to the circular 372-day orbit of the Kepler spacecraft around the sun. If you look at distant objects and move your head back and forth, you will notice that objects close to you will also appear to move back and forth, relative to objects far away. The same concept is producing the apparent motion of Neptune.

While NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is known for its discoveries of planets around other stars, an international team of astronomers plans to use these data to track Neptune’s weather and probe the planet’s internal structure by studying subtle brightness fluctuations that can only be observed with K2.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, 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 Corp. operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Editor: Michele Johnson

Source: NASA's Ames Research Center

Astronomers Discover Ancient System with Five Small Planets

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five small planets in very compact orbits. The planets were detected from the dimming that occurs when they transit the disc of their parent star, as shown in this artist's conception. Image Credit: Tiago Campante/Peter Devine

Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered a planetary system of five small planets dating back to when the Milky Way galaxy was a youthful two billion years old.

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five planets that range in size, the smallest comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest to Venus. All five planets orbit their sun-like star in less than ten days, which makes their orbits much closer than Mercury's sweltering 88-day orbit around the sun.

"While this star formed a long time ago, in fact before most of the stars in the Milky Way, we have no indication that any of these planets have now or ever had life on them," said Steve Howell, Kepler/K2 project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "At their current orbital distances, life as we know it could not exist on these ancient worlds."

Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 percent its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets, two and a half times older than the Earth.

To determine the age of the star and thus its planets, scientists measured the very small change in brightness of the host star caused by pressure waves within the star. The boiling motion beneath the surface of the star generates these pressure waves, affecting the star's temperature and luminosity. These fluctuations lead to miniscule changes or variations in a star's brightness. This study of the interior of stars is called asteroseismology and allows the researchers to measure the diameter, mass and age of a star.

The Kepler-444 system is approximately 117 light-years away toward the constellation Lyra. A paper reporting this discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

For more information on the discovery, see the University of Birmingham's press release.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's mission operations, ground system development and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The NASA Exoplanet Archive in Pasadena and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archive, host and distribute Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

Source: NASA's - Kepler Mission

Three Almost Earth-Size Planets Found Orbiting Nearby Star

This whimsical cartoon shows the three newly discovered extrasolar planets (right) casting shadows on their host star that can been seen as eclipses, or transits, at Earth (left). Earth can be detected by the same effect, but only in the plane of Earth's orbit (the ecliptic). During the K2 mission, many of the extrasolar planets discovered by the Kepler telescope will have this lucky double cosmic alignment that would allow for mutual discovery—if there is anyone on those planets to discover Earth. The three new planets orbiting EPIC 201367065 are just out of alignment; while they are visible from Earth, our solar system is tilted just out of their view.  Credit: K. Teramura, UH IfA. High-resolution version

MAUNA KEA, HI – A team of scientists recently discovered a system of three planets, each just larger than Earth, orbiting a nearby star called EPIC 201367065. The three planets are 1.5-2 times the size of Earth.

The outermost planet orbits on the edge of the so-called “habitable zone,” where the temperature may be just right for liquid water, believed necessary to support life, on the planet’s surface. The paper, “A Nearby M Star with Three Transiting Super-Earths Discovered by K2,” was submitted to the Astrophysical Journal today and is available here.

“The compositions of these newfound planets are unknown, but, there is a very real possibility the outer planet is rocky like Earth,” said Erik Petigura, a University of California, Berkeley graduate student who spent a year visiting the UH Institute for Astronomy. “If so, this planet could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans.”

The planets were confirmed by the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii as well as telescopes in California and Chile.

“Keck's contribution to this discovery was vital,” said Andrew Howard, a University of Hawaii astronomer on the team. “The adaptive optics image from NIRC2 showed the star hosting these three planets is a single star, not a binary. It showed that the planets are real and not an artifact of some masquerading multi-star system.”

Due to the competitive state of planet finding, and the fact that time on the twin Keck telescopes are scheduled months in advance, the team asked UC Berkeley Astronomer, Imke de Pater to gather some data during her scheduled run. 

“The collegiality of the Keck Observatory community is just wonderful,” Howard said. “Imke took time away from her own science observations to get us images of this system, all on a couple hours’ notice.”

The new discovery paves the way for studies of the atmosphere of a warm planet nearly the size of Earth. 

“We’ve learned in the past year that planets the size and temperature of Earth are common in our Milky Way galaxy,” Howard said. “We also discovered some Earth-size planets that appear to be made of the same materials as our Earth, mostly rock and iron.”

The astronomers next hope to determine what elements are in the planets’ atmospheres. If these warm, nearly Earth-size planets have thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres, there is not much chance for life.

“A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many extrasolar planets discovered by the Kepler Mission are enveloped by thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible with life as we know it,” said Ian Crossfield, the University of Arizona astronomer who led the study.

The discovery is all the more remarkable because Kepler is now hobbled by the loss of two reaction wheels that kept it pointing at a fixed spot in space. Kepler, launched in 2009, was reborn in 2014 as “K2” with a clever strategy of pointing the telescope in the plane of the Earth’s orbit to stabilize the spacecraft. Kepler is back to mining the cosmos for planets by searching for eclipses, or transits, as planets orbit in front of their host stars and periodically block some of the starlight.

“I was devastated when Kepler was crippled by a hardware failure,” Petigura added. “It’s a testament to the ingenuity of NASA engineers and scientists that Kepler can still do great science.”

Kepler sees only a small fraction of the planetary systems in its gaze, those with orbital planes aligned edge-on to our view from Earth. Planets with large orbital tilts are simply missed by Kepler.

“It’s remarkable that the Kepler telescope is now pointed in the ecliptic, the plane that Earth sweeps out as it orbits the Sun,” Fulton explains. “This means that some of the planets discovered by K2 will have orbits lined up with Earth’s, a celestial coincidence that allows Kepler to see the alien planets, and Kepler-like telescopes in those very planetary systems (if there are any) to discover Earth.”

“Here’s looking at you, looking at me,” said Howard.

In addition to Howard and Petigura, UH graduate students Benjamin Fulton and Kimberly Aller, and UH astronomer Michael Liu were among the two dozen scientists who contributed to the study.

The W. M. Keck Observatory operates the largest, most scientifically productive telescopes on Earth. The two, 10-meter optical/infrared telescopes near the summit of Mauna Kea on the Island of Hawaii feature a suite of advanced instruments including imagers, multi-object spectrographs, high-resolution spectrographs, integral-field spectrographs and world-leading laser guide star adaptive optics systems. 

NIRC2 (the Near-Infrared Camera, second generation) works in combination with the Keck II adaptive optics system to obtain very sharp images at near-infrared wavelengths, achieving spatial resolutions comparable to or better than those achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope at optical wavelengths. NIRC2 is probably best known for helping to provide definitive proof of a central massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Astronomers also use NIRC2 to map surface features of solar system bodies, detect planets orbiting other stars, and study detailed morphology of distant galaxies.

Keck Observatory is a private 501(c) 3 non-profit organization and a scientific partnership of the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA.

Media Contact:

Steve Jefferson
Communications Officer
W. M. Keck Observatory
808.881.3827
sjefferson@keck.hawaii.edu

Source: W. M. Keck Observatory

The Most Precise Measurement of an Alien World's Size

Using data from NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the size of a world outside our solar system, as illustrated in this artist's conception. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.  Full image and caption

 

Thanks to NASA's Kepler and Spitzer Space Telescopes, scientists have made the most precise measurement ever of the radius of a planet outside our solar system. The size of the exoplanet, dubbed Kepler-93b, is now known to an uncertainty of just 74 miles (119 kilometers) on either side of the planetary body.

The findings confirm Kepler-93b as a "super-Earth" that is about one-and-a-half times the size of our planet. Although super-Earths are common in the galaxy, none exist in our solar system. Exoplanets like Kepler-93b are therefore our only laboratories to study this major class of planet.

With good limits on the sizes and masses of super-Earths, scientists can finally start to theorize about what makes up these weird worlds. Previous measurements, by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, had put Kepler-93b's mass at about 3.8 times that of Earth. The density of Kepler-93b, derived from its mass and newly obtained radius, indicates the planet is in fact very likely made of iron and rock, like Earth. 

"With Kepler and Spitzer, we've captured the most precise measurement to date of an alien planet's size, which is critical for understanding these far-off worlds," said Sarah Ballard, a NASA Carl Sagan Fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle and lead author of a paper on the findings published in the Astrophysical Journal.

"The measurement is so precise that it's literally like being able to measure the height of a six-foot tall person to within three quarters of an inch -- if that person were standing on Jupiter," said Ballard.

Kepler-93b orbits a star located about 300 light-years away, with approximately 90 percent of the sun's mass and radius. The exoplanet's orbital distance -- only about one-sixth that of Mercury's from the sun -- implies a scorching surface temperature around 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit (760 degrees Celsius). Despite its newfound similarities in composition to Earth, Kepler-93b is far too hot for life.  

To make the key measurement about this toasty exoplanet's radius, the Kepler and Spitzer telescopes each watched Kepler-93b cross, or transit, the face of its star, eclipsing a tiny portion of starlight. Kepler's unflinching gaze also simultaneously tracked the dimming of the star caused by seismic waves moving within its interior. These readings encode precise information about the star's interior. The team leveraged them to narrowly gauge the star's radius, which is crucial for measuring the planetary radius.

Spitzer, meanwhile, confirmed that the exoplanet's transit looked the same in infrared light as in Kepler's visible-light observations. These corroborating data from Spitzer -- some of which were gathered in a new, precision observing mode -- ruled out the possibility that Kepler's detection of the exoplanet was bogus, or a so-called false positive.

Taken together, the data boast an error bar of just one percent of the radius of Kepler-93b. The measurements mean that the planet, estimated at about 11,700 miles (18,800 kilometers) in diameter, could be bigger or smaller by about 150 miles (240 kilometers), the approximate distance between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

Spitzer racked up a total of seven transits of Kepler-93b between 2010 and 2011. Three of the transits were snapped using a "peak-up" observational technique. In 2011, Spitzer engineers repurposed the spacecraft's peak-up camera, originally used to point the telescope precisely, to control where light lands on individual pixels within Spitzer's infrared camera.

The upshot of this rejiggering: Ballard and her colleagues were able to cut in half the range of uncertainty of the Spitzer measurements of the exoplanet radius, improving the agreement between the Spitzer and Kepler measurements.

"Ballard and her team have made a major scientific advance while demonstrating the power of Spitzer's new approach to exoplanet observations," said Michael Werner, project scientist for the Spitzer Space Telescope at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Spacecraft operations are based at Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Littleton, Colorado. Data are archived at the Infrared Science Archive housed at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. JPL managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado, developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit:

• http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

For more information about Spitzer, visit:

• http://spitzer.caltech.edu

• http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer

Whitney Clavin
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-4673
whitney.clavin@jpl.nasa.gov
 

"Neapolitan" Exoplanets Come in Three Flavors

New research finds that exoplanets can be divided into three groups – terrestrials, gas giants, and mid-sized "gas dwarfs" – based on how their host stars tend to fall into three distinct groups defined by their compositions. All three are portrayed in this artist's conception. Credit: J. Jauch. High Resolution (jpg)  -  Low Resolution (jpg)

This artist's conception shows a planet forming from a disk of gas and dust surrounding a young star. Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA). High Resolution (jpg)  -  Low Resolution (jpg)

 

Cambridge, MA -The planets of our solar system come in two basic flavors, like vanilla and chocolate ice cream. We have small, rocky terrestrials like Earth and Mars, and large gas giants like Neptune and Jupiter.

We're missing the astronomical equivalent of strawberry ice cream - planets between about one and four times the size of Earth. NASA's Kepler mission has discovered that these types of planets are very common around other stars.

New research following up on the Kepler discoveries shows that alien worlds, or exoplanets, can be divided into three groups - terrestrials, gas giants, and mid-sized "gas dwarfs" - based on how their host stars tend to fall into three distinct groups defined by their compositions.

"We were particularly interested in probing the planetary regime smaller than four times the size of Earth, because it includes three-fourths of the planets found by Kepler. That's where you'll find rocky worlds, which are the only kind that we would consider potentially habitable," says lead author Lars A. Buchhave of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Buchhave presented his research today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Kepler finds exoplanets using the transit method, looking for a star that dims as a planet passes in front of it from our point of view. We can learn the planet's size from how much starlight it blocks. However, to determine the planet's composition we need to measure its mass, so its density can be calculated. A rocky planet will be much denser than a gas giant. Unfortunately, the smaller a planet, the harder it is to measure its mass, especially for the dim and distant stars examined by Kepler.

Buchhave and his colleagues took a different approach. They measured the amount of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, which astronomers collectively call metals, in stars with exoplanet candidates. Since a star and its planets form from the same disk of material, the metallicity of a star reflects the composition of the protoplanetary disk.

The team took follow-up spectra of more than 400 stars hosting over 600 exoplanets. Then, they conducted a statistical test to see if the sizes of the planets fell into natural groups, along with the stellar metallicities.

They found two clear dividing lines - one at a size 1.7 times as large as Earth and the other at a size 3.9 times larger than Earth. They infer that these boundaries also mark changes in composition. Planets smaller than 1.7 Earths are likely to be completely rocky, while those larger than 3.9 Earths are probably gas giants.

Planets between 1.7 and 3.9 times the size of Earth were dubbed gas dwarfs since they have thick atmospheres of hydrogen and helium. The rocky cores of gas dwarfs formed early enough to accrete some gas, although they did not grow as large as gas giants like Jupiter.

In addition, Buchhave and his collaborators discovered that the size of the largest rocky world isn't fixed. The farther a planet is from its star, the larger it can grow before accumulating a thick atmosphere and turning into a gas dwarf. This suggests that some super-Earths can grow into true monsters.

Finally, the team found that stars with small, terrestrial worlds tended to have metallicities similar to the Sun. Stars hosting gas dwarfs tended to be slightly more metal-rich. Stars with gas giants contained the most metals - about 50 percent more than our Sun.

"It seems that there is a 'sweet spot' of metallicity to get Earth-size planets, and it's about the same as the Sun. That makes sense because at lower metallicities you have fewer of the building blocks for planets, and at higher metallicities you tend to make gas giants instead," explains Buchhave.

He emphasizes that metallicity is only one of many factors determining what kinds of planets will form around a given star. Also, their study was limited to relatively close-in planets since those were the easiest for Kepler to spot. They plan to extend their study to planets in wider orbits as that data becomes available.

Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. 

CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.

For more information, contact:

David A. Aguilar
Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7462
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Pulliam
Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
cpulliam@cfa.harvard.edu

Source:  Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

NASA's Kepler Discovers First Earth-Size Planet In The 'Habitable Zone' of Another Star

The artist's concept depicts Kepler-186f , the first validated Earth-size planet to orbit a distant star in the habitable zone. Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech. Kepler-186f, the first Earth-size Planet in the Habitable Zone

 

The diagram compares the planets of our inner solar system to Kepler-186, a five-planet star system about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The five planets of Kepler-186 orbit an M dwarf, a star that is is half the size and mass of the sun. Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech. Kepler-186 and the Solar System

 

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the "habitable zone" -- the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. The discovery of Kepler-186f confirms that planets the size of Earth exist in the habitable zone of stars other than our sun.

While planets have previously been found in the habitable zone, they are all at least 40 percent larger in size than Earth and understanding their makeup is challenging. Kepler-186f is more reminiscent of Earth.

"The discovery of Kepler-186f is a significant step toward finding worlds like our planet Earth," said Paul Hertz, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Future NASA missions, like the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the James Webb Space Telescope, will discover the nearest rocky exoplanets and determine their composition and atmospheric conditions, continuing humankind's quest to find truly Earth-like worlds."

Although the size of Kepler-186f is known, its mass and composition are not. Previous research, however, suggests that a planet the size of Kepler-186f is likely to be rocky.

"We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth. When we search for life outside our solar system we focus on finding planets with characteristics that mimic that of Earth," said Elisa Quintana, research scientist at the SETI Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science. "Finding a habitable zone planet comparable to Earth in size is a major step forward."

Kepler-186f resides in the Kepler-186 system, about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The system is also home to four companion planets, which orbit a star half the size and mass of our sun. The star is classified as an M dwarf, or red dwarf, a class of stars that makes up 70 percent of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

"M dwarfs are the most numerous stars," said Quintana. "The first signs of other life in the galaxy may well come from planets orbiting an M dwarf."

Kepler-186f orbits its star once every 130-days and receives one-third the energy from its star that Earth gets from the sun, placing it nearer the outer edge of the habitable zone. On the surface of Kepler-186f, the brightness of its star at high noon is only as bright as our sun appears to us about an hour before sunset.

"Being in the habitable zone does not mean we know this planet is habitable. The temperature on the planet is strongly dependent on what kind of atmosphere the planet has," said Thomas Barclay, research scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute at Ames, and co-author of the paper. "Kepler-186f can be thought of as an Earth-cousin rather than an Earth-twin. It has many properties that resemble Earth."

The four companion planets, Kepler-186b, Kepler-186c, Kepler-186d, and Kepler-186e, whiz around their sun every four, seven, 13, and 22 days, respectively, making them too hot for life as we know it. These four inner planets all measure less than 1.5 times the size of Earth.

The next steps in the search for distant life include looking for true Earth-twins -- Earth-size planets orbiting within the habitable zone of a sun-like star -- and measuring the their chemical compositions. The Kepler Space Telescope, which simultaneously and continuously measured the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, is NASA's first mission capable of detecting Earth-size planets around stars like our sun.

Ames is responsible for Kepler's ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

The SETI Institute is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to scientific research, education and public outreach.  The mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

---

Media contacts:

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

NASA's Kepler Mission Announces a Planet Bonanza, 715 New Worlds

The artist concept depicts multiple-transiting planet systems, which are stars with more than one planet. The planets eclipse or transit their host star from the vantage point of the observer. This angle is called edge-on. Image Credit: NASA 

NASA's Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar system.

Nearly 95 percent of these planets are smaller than Neptune, which is almost four times the size of Earth.

 This discovery marks a significant increase in the number of known small-sized planets more akin to Earth than previously identified exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system.

"The Kepler team continues to amaze and excite us with their planet hunting results," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "That these new planets and solar systems look somewhat like our own, portends a great future when we have the James Webb Space Telescope in space to characterize the new worlds.”

Since the discovery of the first planets outside our solar system roughly two decades ago, verification has been a laborious planet-by-planet process. Now, scientists have a statistical technique that can be applied to many planets at once when they are found in systems that harbor more than one planet around the same star.

To verify this bounty of planets, a research team co-led by Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., analyzed stars with more than one potential planet, all of which were detected in the first two years of Kepler's observations -- May 2009 to March 2011.

The research team used a technique called verification by multiplicity, which relies in part on the logic of probability. Kepler observes 150,000 stars, and has found a few thousand of those to have planet candidates. If the candidates were randomly distributed among Kepler's stars, only a handful would have more than one planet candidate. However, Kepler observed hundreds of stars that have multiple planet candidates. Through a careful study of this sample, these 715 new planets were verified.

This method can be likened to the behavior we know of lions and lionesses. In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates. The lionesses would sometimes be observed grouped together whereas lions tend to roam on their own. If you see two lions it could be a lion and a lioness or it could be two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride. Thus, through multiplicity the lioness can be reliably identified in much the same way multiple planet candidates can be found around the same star.

"Four years ago, Kepler began a string of announcements of first hundreds, then thousands, of planet candidates --but they were only candidate worlds," said Lissauer. "We've now developed a process to verify multiple planet candidates in bulk to deliver planets wholesale, and have used it to unveil a veritable bonanza of new worlds."

These multiple-planet systems are fertile grounds for studying individual planets and the configuration of planetary neighborhoods. This provides clues to planet formation.

Four of these new planets are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for life-giving liquid water.

One of these new habitable zone planets, called Kepler-296f, orbits a star half the size and 5 percent as bright as our sun. Kepler-296f is twice the size of Earth, but scientists do not know whether the planet is a gaseous world, with a thick hydrogen-helium envelope, or it is a water world surrounded by a deep ocean.

"From this study we learn planets in these multi-systems are small and their orbits are flat and circular -- resembling pancakes -- not your classical view of an atom," said Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., and co-leader of the research. "The more we explore the more we find familiar traces of ourselves amongst the stars that remind us of home."

This latest discovery brings the confirmed count of planets outside our solar system to nearly 1,700. As we continue to reach toward the stars, each discovery brings us one step closer to a more accurate understanding of our place in the galaxy.

Launched in March 2009, Kepler is the first NASA mission to find potentially habitable Earth-size planets. Discoveries include more than 3,600 planet candidates, of which 961 have been verified as bona-fide worlds.

The findings papers will be published March 10 in The Astrophysical Journal and are available for download at: http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/digital-press-kit-kepler-planet-bonanza

Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the Kepler space telescope, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-5241
j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

NASA Kepler Results Usher in a New Era of Astronomy

Larger Image

From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged. Since the last update in January, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler increased by 29 percent and now totals 3,538, analysis led by Jason Rowe, a SETI research scientist. Image Credit: SETI.  Larger Image

Scientists from around the world are gathered this week at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., for the second Kepler Science Conference, where they will discuss the latest findings resulting from the analysis of Kepler Space Telescope data.

Included in these findings is the discovery of 833 new candidate planets, which will be announced today by the Kepler team. Ten of these candidates are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for liquid water.

At this conference two years ago, the Kepler team announced its first confirmed habitable zone planet, Kepler-22b. Since then, four more habitable zone candidates have been confirmed, including two in a single system.

New Kepler data analysis and research also show that most stars in our galaxy have at least one planet. This suggests that the majority of stars in the night sky may be home to planetary systems, perhaps some like our solar system.

"The impact of the Kepler mission results on exoplanet research and stellar astrophysics is illustrated by the attendance of nearly 400 scientists from 30 different countries at the Kepler Science Conference," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at Ames. "We gather to celebrate and expand our collective success at the opening of a new era of astronomy."

From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged. Since the last update in January, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler increased by 29 percent and now totals 3,538. Analysis led by Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., determined that the largest increase of 78 percent was found in the category of Earth-sized planets, based on observations conducted from May 2009 to March 2012. Rowe's findings support the observed trend that smaller planets are more common.

An independent statistical analysis of nearly all four years of Kepler data suggests that one in five stars like the sun is home to a planet up to twice the size of Earth, orbiting in a temperate environment. A research team led by Erik Petigura, doctoral candidate at University of California, Berkeley, used publicly accessible data from Kepler to derive this result.

Kepler data also fueled another field of astronomy dubbed asteroseismology -- the study of the interior of stars. Scientists examine sound waves generated by the boiling motion beneath the surface of the star. They probe the interior structure of a star just as geologists use seismic waves generated by earthquakes to probe the interior structure of Earth.

"Stars are the building blocks of the galaxy, driving its evolution and providing safe harbors for planets. To study the stars, one truly explores the galaxy and our place within it," said William Chaplin, professor for astrophysics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. "Kepler has revolutionized asteroseismology by giving us observations of unprecedented quality, duration and continuity for thousands of stars. These are data we could only have dreamt of a few years ago."

Kepler's mission is to determine what percentage of stars like the sun harbor small planets the approximate size and temperature of Earth. For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitors the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes. More than a year of the collected data remains to be fully reviewed and analyzed.

Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the second Kepler Science Conference, visit: http://nexsci.caltech.edu/conferences/KeplerII/index.shtml

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

Associated resources:
Download .mp3 of Nov. 4, 2013 media briefing [12 MB]
Download .PDF of slides from Jason Rowe [8 MB]

Michele Johnson
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-6982
michele.johnson@nasa.gov