New Research Reveals How Circumbinary Planets Form
New research from the University of Bristol reveals how circumbinary planets form. Like the fictional Star Wars planet, Kepler-34(AB)b is a circumbinary planet, so-called because…
Kepler Space Telescope News
Five New Rocky Planets Discovered in Kepler Data
Researchers announced that ground-based follow-up observations of Kepler’s exoplanet systems have resulted in the discovery of five new rocky planets. More than three-quarters of the…
Aerospace Engineers Discover a Possible Fix for the Kepler Spacecraft
Kepler mission and Ball Aerospace engineers believe they have figured out how to get the Kepler Spacecraft working again. By maneuvering the spacecraft so that…
Astronomers Estimate One in Five Sol-Like Stars Have Planets Conducive to Life
Based on a statistical analysis of all the Kepler data, astronomers now estimate that one in five stars like our Sun have planets about the…
Kepler Data Reveal the Discovery of 833 New Candidate Planets
The latest analysis of Kepler Space Telescope data has revealed the discovery of 833 new candidate planets; ten of these candidates are less than twice…
Kepler-78b, A Lava World with an Earth-Like Density
Astronomers discover the first known Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density, a scorching lava world that circles its star every eight and a half hours…
Astronomers Discover Misaligned Planets in a Distant Planetary System
In a newly published study, researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and Iowa State University detail the discovery of two planets in the Kepler-56 planetary…
Astronomers Create First Cloud Map of a Planet Beyond Our Solar System
Astronomers used data from NASA’s Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes to produce a very low-resolution ‘map’ of the exoplanet Kepler-7b. Scientists using data from NASA’s…
Scientists Discover an Earth-Sized Exoplanet That Orbits Its Star Every 8.5 Hours
Scientists from MIT have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet, named Kepler 78b, that orbits its star every 8.5 hours and has estimated surface temperatures as high…
NASA Ends Attempts to Fully Restore Kepler, Considers New Missions
NASA has announced that all attempts to fully restore Kepler have failed and that they are now looking at potential new missions for the space…
NASA Kepler Mission Update
While researchers continue to analyze Kepler data, a team of engineers continues to work on reaction wheel performance assessment and recovery plans for the spacecraft….
Astronomers Discover Transiting Planets in Star Cluster NGC 6811
A team of astronomers have discovered two planets (Kepler-66b and Kepler-67b) that are about three-fourths the size of Neptune orbiting Sun-like stars 3,000 light-years from…
Kepler Data Reveals That Stars Don’t Eat Their Young Migrating Planets
Using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, a newly published study suggests that migrating planets stop their inward journey before reaching their stars, remaining in…
NASA’s Kepler Mission Delivers New Data
NASA’s Kepler Mission delivers new data, adding 1,924 new KOIs detected over a 34-month baseline. On May 28, 2013, NASA’s Kepler mission delivered new data…
Kepler-76b: A Hot Jupiter With Superrotation
Researchers used the BEEER algorithm to identify a hot Jupiter in the Kepler light curve, Kepler-76b. Eight hundred and eighty nine exoplanets (planets around stars…
How NASA Might Revive the Kepler Space Telescope
In a conversation with Stanford News Service, Scott Hubbard, a Stanford professor and former NASA official, explains how NASA might bring the Kepler spacecraft back…
Two New Extrasolar Planets KOI-200b and KOI-889b Detected
Two new transiting, close-in, giant extrasolar planets KOI-200b and KOI-889b, have been detected and characterized with Kepler, SOPHIE and HARPS-N. An international team of astronomers,…
Astronomers Use “Characterization by Proxy” to Learn the Nature of Kepler-61
Using “characterization by proxy” and observations from the Kepler Space Telescope, researchers take a closer look at Kepler-61b, a planet orbiting near the inner edge…