Telescope spots 1,284 new planets

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Researchers have found more planets in the habitable zone.
Researchers have found more planets in the habitable zone.
Image: NASA, W. Stenzel.
The search for other planets capable of hosting life just got a little more interesting. In what NASA officials have characterized as “the single largest finding of planets to date,” researchers verified 1,284 new planets.

    The planets were found using data from the Kepler space telescope. Launched in 2009, the Kepler is a robotic spacecraft that has taken images of stars. The instrument captures planets as they transit in front of their respective stars, causing a dimming of the star’s light, according to NASA. It is named for Johannes Kepler, the 16th century scholar who wrote about laws of planetary motion.
    The process of confirming that the dimming light is actually a planet has been slow going. But these planets were confirmed using a newly devised statistical technique developed by Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey. By analyzing the signal sent in the transiting process, researchers were able to calculate the probability that they had found a planet -- or a false positive signal.
    “We’ve more than doubled the number of known planets smaller than the size of Neptune,” Morton said, during an online audio conference.  
    Nearly 5,000 total planet candidates have been spotted, and more than 3,200 have been verified. Of those, 2,325 were discovered by Kepler. But it’s less common for researchers to talk about finding rocky planets in the habitable zone -- meaning a planet is at a distance around a star that could enable it to support life. Since Kepler’s launch, 21 planets less than twice the size of Earth have been discovered in the habitable zones of their stars. Of that number, nine were newly validated planets announced May 10.
    Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, said she was “especially intrigued” by one Earth-sized planet (designated Kepler 1229B) close to the middle of the habitable zone near its star. Batalha also pointed out another planet (Kepler 1638B) that is “about 60 percent larger than the Earth,” she said, “and orbiting a star that seems to be slightly warmer than our own sun.”
    The Kepler research has allowed scientists to build exponentially on their knowledge of the universe.
     “We now know that exoplanets are common, that most stars in our galaxy have planetary systems,” said Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA headquarters in Washington. “A reasonable fraction of the stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets, that is, rocky planets in the habitable or Goldilocks zone. Knowing this is the first step to addressing the question: Are we alone in the universe?”
    The study led by Morton, "False Positive Probabilities for All Kepler Objects of Interest: 1284 Newly Validated Planets and 428 Likely False Positives," was published May 10 in The Astrophysical Journal.

    Related:

    Scientists: Water possible on three planets

    NASA marks verification of 1,000th planet

    Planet in habitable zone orbits sunlike star 

    Science in brief: New tool to help find planets

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