Cidersomerset
26th February 2014, 23:37
I have posted several of these reports as more and more planets are officially being discovered.
i4FFk3wk_m0
Uploaded on 3 Feb 2011
http://www.FunToWatch.TV NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size
planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid
water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size
and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.
Video Credit: NASA
http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.59.11/desktop/3.5/img/blq-blocks_grey_alpha.png
26 February 2014 Last updated at 20:33
Kepler telescope bags huge haul of planetsBy Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73243000/jpg/_73243050_whatsubject.jpg
Multi-planet systems Artist's impression: It is now clear that multi-planet systems are common
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
Europe picks Plato planet-hunter
One in five suns has habitable world
Exoplanet tally soars above 1,000
The science team sifting data from the US space agency's (Nasa) Kepler telescope says
it has identified 715 new planets beyond our Solar System.
This is a huge new haul.
In the nearly two decades since the first so-called exoplanet was discovered,
researchers had claimed the detection of just over 1,000 new worlds.
Kepler's latest bounty orbit only 305 stars, meaning they are all in multi-planet systems.
The vast majority, 95%, are smaller than our Neptune, which is four times the radius of
the Earth.
Four of the new planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of Earth, and they orbit their
host suns in the "habitable zone" - the region around a star where water can keep a
liquid state.
Whether that is the case on these planets cannot be known for sure - Kepler's targets
are hundreds of light-years in the distance, and this is too far away for very detailed
investigation.
The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 on a $600m (£360m) mission to
assess the likely population of Earth-sized planets in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Faulty pointing mechanisms eventually blunted its abilities last year, but not before it
had identified thousands of possible, or "candidate", worlds in a small patch of sky in
the Constellation Lyra.
It did this by looking for transits - the periodic dips in light that occur when planets
move across the faces of stars.
Of something like 3,600 candidates recorded, just over 20% have now been moved up
to the status of confirmed detections by the Kepler team.
"This is the largest windfall of planets that's ever been announced at one time," said
Douglas Hudgins from Nasa's astrophysics division.
"Second, these results establish that planetary systems with multiple planets around
one star, like our own Solar System, are in fact common.
"Third, we know that small planets - planets ranging from the size of Neptune down to
the size of the Earth - make up the majority of planets in our galaxy."
When Kepler first started its work, the number of confirmed planets came at a trickle.
Scientists had to be sure that the variations in brightness being observed were indeed
caused by transiting planets and not by a couple of stars orbiting and eclipsing each other.
The follow-up work required to make this distinction - between candidate and
confirmation - was laborious.
But the sudden dump of new planets announced on Wednesday has exploited a new
statistical approach referred to as "verification by multiplicity".
This rests on the recognition that if a star displays multiple dips in light, it must be
planets that are responsible because it is very difficult for several stars to orbit each
other in a similar way and maintain a stable configuration.
"This technique that we've introduced for wholesale planet validation will be productive
in the future. These results are based on the first two years of Kepler observations and
with each additional year, we'll be able to bring in a few hundred more planets,"
explained Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at Nasa's Ames Research Center.
Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, but is not involved in the Kepler mission.
She commented: "With hundreds of new validated planets, Kepler reinforces its major
finding that small planets are extremely common in our galaxy. And I'm super-excited
about this, being one of the people working on the next generation of space telescopes -
we hope to put up direct imaging missions, and we need to be reassured that small
planets are common."
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73243000/jpg/_73243085_7ad6b23d-78a1-4b91-92dd-cc6aee2868ce.jpg
Graphic The habitable zone is the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26362433
===================================================
A reminder for anyone not sure what Keplers mission is.....
Kepler Search Earth-Size Planets Begins NASA
PEKaGyjKQwY
Uploaded on 3 Feb 2011
http://www.FunToWatch.TV Since its launch in March, 2009, the Kepler Mission has
announced the discovery of 9 confirmed exoplanets (or planets outside our solar
system). This video explores how the team works to combine photometry from the
spacecraft, data from ground-based observatories and precise asteroseismic
analysis to determine if Earths are common or rare in our Galaxy.
Video Credit: NASA
i4FFk3wk_m0
Uploaded on 3 Feb 2011
http://www.FunToWatch.TV NASA's Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size
planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid
water could exist on a planet's surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size
and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.
Video Credit: NASA
http://static.bbci.co.uk/frameworks/barlesque/2.59.11/desktop/3.5/img/blq-blocks_grey_alpha.png
26 February 2014 Last updated at 20:33
Kepler telescope bags huge haul of planetsBy Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73243000/jpg/_73243050_whatsubject.jpg
Multi-planet systems Artist's impression: It is now clear that multi-planet systems are common
Continue reading the main story
Related Stories
Europe picks Plato planet-hunter
One in five suns has habitable world
Exoplanet tally soars above 1,000
The science team sifting data from the US space agency's (Nasa) Kepler telescope says
it has identified 715 new planets beyond our Solar System.
This is a huge new haul.
In the nearly two decades since the first so-called exoplanet was discovered,
researchers had claimed the detection of just over 1,000 new worlds.
Kepler's latest bounty orbit only 305 stars, meaning they are all in multi-planet systems.
The vast majority, 95%, are smaller than our Neptune, which is four times the radius of
the Earth.
Four of the new planets are less than 2.5 times the radius of Earth, and they orbit their
host suns in the "habitable zone" - the region around a star where water can keep a
liquid state.
Whether that is the case on these planets cannot be known for sure - Kepler's targets
are hundreds of light-years in the distance, and this is too far away for very detailed
investigation.
The Kepler space telescope was launched in 2009 on a $600m (£360m) mission to
assess the likely population of Earth-sized planets in our Milky Way Galaxy.
Faulty pointing mechanisms eventually blunted its abilities last year, but not before it
had identified thousands of possible, or "candidate", worlds in a small patch of sky in
the Constellation Lyra.
It did this by looking for transits - the periodic dips in light that occur when planets
move across the faces of stars.
Of something like 3,600 candidates recorded, just over 20% have now been moved up
to the status of confirmed detections by the Kepler team.
"This is the largest windfall of planets that's ever been announced at one time," said
Douglas Hudgins from Nasa's astrophysics division.
"Second, these results establish that planetary systems with multiple planets around
one star, like our own Solar System, are in fact common.
"Third, we know that small planets - planets ranging from the size of Neptune down to
the size of the Earth - make up the majority of planets in our galaxy."
When Kepler first started its work, the number of confirmed planets came at a trickle.
Scientists had to be sure that the variations in brightness being observed were indeed
caused by transiting planets and not by a couple of stars orbiting and eclipsing each other.
The follow-up work required to make this distinction - between candidate and
confirmation - was laborious.
But the sudden dump of new planets announced on Wednesday has exploited a new
statistical approach referred to as "verification by multiplicity".
This rests on the recognition that if a star displays multiple dips in light, it must be
planets that are responsible because it is very difficult for several stars to orbit each
other in a similar way and maintain a stable configuration.
"This technique that we've introduced for wholesale planet validation will be productive
in the future. These results are based on the first two years of Kepler observations and
with each additional year, we'll be able to bring in a few hundred more planets,"
explained Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist at Nasa's Ames Research Center.
Sara Seager is a professor of planetary science and physics at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, but is not involved in the Kepler mission.
She commented: "With hundreds of new validated planets, Kepler reinforces its major
finding that small planets are extremely common in our galaxy. And I'm super-excited
about this, being one of the people working on the next generation of space telescopes -
we hope to put up direct imaging missions, and we need to be reassured that small
planets are common."
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73243000/jpg/_73243085_7ad6b23d-78a1-4b91-92dd-cc6aee2868ce.jpg
Graphic The habitable zone is the region around a star where water can keep a liquid state
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26362433
===================================================
A reminder for anyone not sure what Keplers mission is.....
Kepler Search Earth-Size Planets Begins NASA
PEKaGyjKQwY
Uploaded on 3 Feb 2011
http://www.FunToWatch.TV Since its launch in March, 2009, the Kepler Mission has
announced the discovery of 9 confirmed exoplanets (or planets outside our solar
system). This video explores how the team works to combine photometry from the
spacecraft, data from ground-based observatories and precise asteroseismic
analysis to determine if Earths are common or rare in our Galaxy.
Video Credit: NASA