JOE T. COXWELL --- Science Fiction Author & Astronomical Artist
Original Science Fiction and Space/Astronomical Art
Member Mississippi Writers Guild
Space News and Features
  • Home
    • Joe T. Coxwell -- A Brief Biography
    • Coxwell's Blog
    • Author Sci-Fi Recommendations
    • Author Interview with Sleepytown Press
  • FREE Story Teasers
    • Epsilon Wish Teaser
    • Third Contact Teaser
  • Purchase Book
    • Order On-line from Amazon.com and Others
    • Order a Kindle Download from Amazon.com
    • Order from the Author by Mail
  • Space News
    • Extraterrestrial Life Search >
      • ​Extraterrestrial Life Could Be Purple
      • ​Alien Life Could Thrive on 'Supercritical' CO2 Instead of Water
      • Alien Megastructure -- "Tabby's Star" -- KIC 8462852 >
        • ​Kepler's 'Alien Megastructure' Star Just Got Weirder
        • ​'Alien Megastructure' Star Keeps Getting Stranger
        • 'Alien Megastructure' Star Is at It Again with the Strange Dimming
      • Humans Will Hear from Intelligent Aliens This Century, Physicist Says
      • ​Could Methane on Saturn's Moon Enceladus Be a Sign of Life?
      • Superflare Blasts Proxima b, the Nearest Exoplanet, ​Dimming Hopes of Life
    • Exoplanets >
      • The Largest Alien Planet of TRAPPIST-1 Has an Atmosphere That Evolved Over Eons
      • First Exomoon Found? Neptune-Sized World Possibly Spotted Orbiting Alien Planet
      • ​Ringed, Rocky Alien Planets May Hide in Plain Sight
      • Kepler Space Telescope Discovers ​95 More Alien Planets
      • ​The Alien Planets of TRAPPIST-1 May Be Too Wet for Life
      • ​Exoplanets: Worlds Beyond Our Solar System
      • Current Potentially Habitable Exoplanets
      • That's No Moon? Proposed Exomoon Defies Formation Theories
      • KOI-500: A Crowded Little Solar System
      • Super-Earth HD 40307g in its Habitable Zone
      • New Earth-mass Planet Found in Nearby Alpha Centauri System
      • Super-Earth 55 Cancri e: Not So Earthlike
      • Newfound Alien Planet a Top Contender to Host Life
      • Planets in Multiple Star Systems -- Is Tatooine for Real?
      • Miniature Solar System Discovered
      • A Periodic Table of Exoplanets
      • Known Types of Alien Planets
      • How Planets in Alien Solar Systems Stack Up
      • Earth-sized Planets Discovered
      • Alien Planet HD 85512 b Holds Possibility of Life
    • Mars Exploration >
      • ​'Mars Ain't Gonna Be Easy': What Apollo 17 Leaders Are Saying About Future Space Exploration
      • The Curiosity Rover Just Drilled into a Rock on Mars for 1st Time Since 2016
      • Curiosity Mars Rover -- Image Gallery
      • Humans on Mars By 2039 -- The Long Delay is Mostly Lack of Political Will
      • Invasion of Mars: Landings and Crashes
    • US Space Program >
      • Pluto's Biggest Moon Could Give an Orbiter an (Almost) Free Ride
      • New Horizons Pluto Photo Gallery >
        • Pluto May Have a Gooey Carbon Layer Beneath Its Crust
      • Space Launch System: NASA's Giant Rocket Explained
      • NASA's New Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
    • Private Spaceflight Developments >
      • SpaceX's Dragon Capsule & Falcon-9 Booster
      • SpaceX Nails the Barge Landing!
      • Boeing's CST-100 Spacecraft
      • Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser Spaceplane
      • Blue Origins >
        • Blue Origin's New Glenn Booster
    • The Solar System >
      • The Sun
      • Mercury
      • Venus >
        • NASA Wants to Send Humans to Venus, to Live in Airships Floating on Clouds
      • Earth's Moon
      • Mars
      • Asteroids / Vesta / Ceres >
        • Asteroid Sampling MIssion
      • Jupiter
      • Saturn / Titan
      • Uranus
      • Neptune
      • Pluto / Eris / Kuiper Belt Objects
  • Space Art & More
    • New or Recent Artwork
    • Space Art Gallery
    • Space Art Slideshow
  • Links & Contact Info
    • Author Contact
    • Links

​Discovery! Kepler Space Telescope Discovers
​95 More Alien Planets

Picture
By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | February 15, 2018 11:00am ET
 
      Planets around other stars are the rule rather than the exception, and there are likely hundreds of billions of exoplanets in the Milky Way alone. NASA's Kepler space telescope has found more than 2,400 alien worlds, including a new haul of 95 planets announced on Feb. 15, 2018.

      The exoplanet discoveries by NASA's Kepler space telescope keep rolling in.  Astronomers poring through data gathered during Kepler's current extended mission, known as K2, have spotted 95 more alien planets, a new study reports.   That brings the K2 tally to 292, and the total haul over Kepler's entire operational life to nearly 2,440 — about two-thirds of all the alien worlds ever discovered. And more than 2,000 additional Kepler candidates await confirmation by follow-up observations or analysis. [7 Greatest Exoplanet Discoveries by NASA's Kepler (So Far)]
 
      Kepler launched in March 2009, on a mission to help scientists determine just how common rocky, potentially habitable worlds such as Earth are throughout the Milky Way. For four years, the spacecraft stared continuously at about 150,000 stars, looking for tiny dips in their brightness caused by the passage of planets across their faces.
 
      This work was highly productive, as noted above. But in May 2013, the second of Kepler's four orientation-maintaining "reaction wheels" failed, and the spacecraft lost its superprecise pointing ability, bringing the original mission to a close.  But mission managers figured out a way to stabilize Kepler using sunlight pressure, and the spacecraft soon embarked on its K2 mission, which involves exoplanet hunting on a more limited basis, as well as observing comets and asteroids in our own solar system, supernovas and a range of other objects and phenomena.   For the new study, researchers analyzed K2 data going all the way back to 2014, zeroing in on 275 "candidate" signals.   "We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft," study lead author Andrew Mayo, a Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Denmark's National Space Institute, said in a statement. "But we also detected planets that range from sub-Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger."
 
      Indeed, 149 of the signals turned out to be caused by bona fide exoplanets, 95 of which are new discoveries. And one of the new ones is a record setter.   "We validated a planet on a 10-day orbit around a star called HD 212657, which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet," Mayo said. "Planets around bright stars are important because astronomers can learn a lot about them from ground-based observatories."
​
      The new study was published today (Feb. 15) in The Astronomical Journal.
 
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.


Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.