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Kepler Finds 10 New Earth-Like Exoplanet Candidates

posted by CoolHand on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the new-vacay-home dept.

takyon writes:

The Kepler space telescope has found 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are "Earth-like":

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.

This is the most comprehensive and detailed catalog release of candidate exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, from Kepler's first four years of data. It's also the final catalog from the spacecraft's view of the patch of sky in the Cygnus constellation.

With the release of this catalog, derived from data publicly available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, there are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified.

Also at Space.com, New Scientist, and CNN.

Previously: Kepler Exoplanet Results Briefing on June 19th, Conference From 19th-23rd

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:21PM (6 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:21PM (#529525) Journal

    What size of radio/traditional telescope do we need to do rudimentary spectroscopy on the closest of these planets? I imagine the new thirty meter telescope might, but I'm not qualified to do the math.

    It'd be amazing to start seeing what the atmosphere/surface of these planets are made of.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:39PM (2 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:39PM (#529535)

    I vote for building a really huge telescope on the far side of the Moon.

    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:27PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:27PM (#529551)

      Grishnakh is a well known moon shill, disregard his posts about it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:43PM (#529560)

        Maser cannon on the near side of the moon.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:48PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday June 22 2017, @03:48PM (#529539) Journal

    https://jwst.nasa.gov/origins.html [nasa.gov]

    One of the main uses of the James Webb Space Telescope will be to study the atmospheres of exoplanets, to search for the building blocks of life elsewhere in the universe. But JWST is an infrared telescope. How is this good for studying exoplanets?

    One method JWST will use for studying exoplanets is the transit method, which means it will look for dimming of the light from a star as its planet passes between us and the star. (Astronomers call this a "transit".) Collaboration with ground-based telescopes can help us measure the mass of the planets, via the radial velocity technique (i.e., measuring the stellar wobble produced by the gravitational tug of a planet), and then JWST will do spectroscopy of the planet's atmosphere.

    JWST will also carry coronagraphs to enable direct imaging of exoplanets near bright stars. The image of an exoplanet would just be a spot, not a grand panorama, but by studying that spot, we can learn a great deal about it. That includes its color, differences between winter and summer, vegetation, rotation, weather...How is this done? The answer again is spectroscopy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope [wikipedia.org]

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    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:31PM (1 child)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 22 2017, @04:31PM (#529556) Journal

      Webb will be much smaller than the TMT, but I guess has less interference which is better for spectroscopy, then?

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday June 22 2017, @10:53PM

        by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday June 22 2017, @10:53PM (#529692) Journal

        http://www.tmt.org/science-case [tmt.org]

        A 30-meter telescope, operating in wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared, is an essential tool to address questions in astronomy ranging from understanding star and planet formation to unraveling the history of galaxies and the development of large-scale structure in the universe.

        [...] In addition to providing nine times the collecting area of the current largest optical/infrared telescopes (the 10-meter Keck Telescopes), TMT will be used with adaptive optics systems to allow diffraction-limited performance, i.e., the best that the optics of the system can theoretically provide. This will provide unparalleled high-sensitivity spatial resolution more than 12 times sharper than what is achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope. For many applications, diffraction-limited observations give gains in sensitivity that scale like the diameter of the mirror to the fourth power, so this increase in size has major implications.

        [...] Spectroscopic exploration of the “dark ages” when the first sources of light and the first heavy elements in the universe formed and when the universe, which had recombined at redshift (z) ~1000, became re-ionized by these sources of light. The nature of “first-light” objects and their effects on the young universe are among the outstanding open questions in astrophysics. Here TMT and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will work hand-in-hand, with JWST providing the targets for detailed study with TMT’s spectrometers.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope#Infrared_astronomy [wikipedia.org]

        Since water vapor and carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere strongly absorbs most infrared, ground-based infrared astronomy is limited to narrow wavelength ranges where the atmosphere absorbs less strongly. Additionally, the atmosphere itself radiates in the infrared, often overwhelming light from the object being observed. This makes space the ideal place for infrared observation.

        Adaptive optics is a game changer, but it can only take you so far.

        TMT was planned to begin operating in 2022 but that has been delayed due to the construction/permiting controversy. JWST is designed to last 5-10 years and begins collecting data around early 2019. There may be less overlap than you expect between the missions.

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