Today, as shown in figure 10, we know of over 3,500 confirmed exoplanets, with more than 2,500 of those found in the Kepler data. These planets range in size from larger than Jupiter to smaller than Earth. In just a couple decades, thanks largely to Kepler, we have gone from suspecting exoplanets existed to knowing that there are more…
Tag: Kepler
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Kepler’s Gaze Shifts Toward New Targets — Supernova, the ‘Beehive Cluster’ and Earth
The sixteenth observing campaign of the Kepler spacecraft’s K2 extended mission is now underway. The campaign has prospects for discoveries among 30,000 objects in the direction of the constellation Cancer. The cartoon illustrates some of the objects of interest that Kepler is observing for 80 days, from Dec. 7 to Feb. 25, 2018.
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Kepler’s Gaze Shifts Toward New Targets — Supernovae, the ‘Beehive Cluster’ and Earth
The sixteenth observing campaign of the Kepler spacecraft’s K2 extended mission is now underway. The campaign has prospects for discoveries among 30,000 objects in the direction of the constellation Cancer. The cartoon illustrates some of the objects of interest that Kepler is observing for 80 days, from Dec. 7 to Feb. 25, 2018.
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The Scientific Quest to Explain Kepler’s Most Enigmatic Find
Some 1,500 light years from Earth, a mystery of stellar proportions is playing out. The world has the chance to watch, as the scientific process and the mystery continue to unfold.
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What Does Kepler Have Its Eye On?
Kepler’s K2 Mission Continues to Eye New Patches of Sky
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Scientists Improve Brown Dwarf Weather Forecasts
Researchers have a new model for explaining how clouds move and change shape in brown dwarfs, using insights from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
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An Eclipse by Any Other Name: Doing Science with Transits and Occultations
While the mechanics of a total solar eclipse are actually rather mundane, different flavors of this phenomenon make some very sophisticated science possible.
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Hidden Stars May Make Planets Appear Smaller
In the search for planets similar to our own, an important point of comparison is the planet’s density.
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Geert Barentsen Talks About Bringing People Together To Contribute to Exoplanet Science
A conversation with Geert Barentsen, the Guest Observer Office director for the Kepler and K2 mission at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
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Podcast Archive 2009: NASA’s Kepler Mission to Look for Earth-like Planets
Originally aired on February 27, 2009, a conversation on the Kepler Mission with Principal Investigator William Borucki, Deputy Principal Investigator David Koch, and Kepler Science Council Member Alan Boss from the Carnegie Institute of Washington.
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NASA Releases Kepler Survey Catalog with Hundreds of New Planet Candidates
NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet.
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Exoplanet Populations
The population of exoplanets detected by the Kepler mission (yellow dots) compared to those detected by other surveys using various methods: radial velocity (light blue dots), transit (pink dots), imaging (green dots), microlensing (dark blue dots), and pulsar timing (red dots).
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New Kepler Planet Candidates
There are 4,034 planet candidates now known with the release of the eighth Kepler planet candidate catalog. Of these, 2,335 have been confirmed as planets. The blue dots show planet candidates from previous catalogs, while the yellow dots show new candidates from the eighth catalog.