Kepler Mission Locates 5 New Planets
NASA’s Kepler Mission has discovered five new extrasolar planets, and program leaders are optimistic about finding Earth-like planets in the misson’s future. Earlier today Kepler team leader William Borucki announced the discovery of the five new planets at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, D.C. The planets, referred to as “roasters” for their extreme surface temperatures and proximity to stars, are larger than Neptune and orbit their stars in less than four days.
Slides from the press conference presentation are available at the NASA Web site, and offer illustrations and diagrams depicting planet size, temperature, density and mass, and much more. The Kepler telescope “detects planets by spotting light-dipping eclipses, or ‘transits’, of stars by their companion planets.” The spacecraft, part of the $600 million Kepler mission, will search the stars in the Milky Way galaxy for signs of Earth-like planets.