Five new exoplanets found by Kepler telescope

William Atkins
Tuesday, 05 January 2010 02:37

Science - Space

The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered five new planets and they are being called Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b, and 8b.


According to the 1.4.2010 NASA media brief Kepler Discovers Five New Exoplanets, “NASA's Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets.”

The five newly discovered exosolar planets, or exoplanets, are known as “hot Jupiters” because they have masses much larger than Earth, more in the range of the planets Neptune and Jupiter.

The orbits of the five planets range from 3.3 to 4.9 days (so they are very close to their parent star), and, thus, the estimated temperature on the planets is very hot--ranging from 2,200 to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1204 to 1649 degrees Celsius).

Such “hot” temperatures would be hotter than molten lava and too hot for any organism known to live on Earth to survive.

Dr. William Borucki, who is associated with the NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field, California), is the principle investigator for the science portion of the Kepler mission.

Dr. Borucki states, “The discoveries show that our science instrument is working well. Indications are that Kepler will meet all its science goals." [NASA]

For additional information on the discovery made by the Kepler Space Telescope, along with a couple of neat charts, please go to the NASA article mentioned earlier: “Kepler Discovers Five New Exoplanets.”