Latest Kepler Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As the Kepler Space Telescope's prime mission comes to an end after three-and-a-half years, its new extended mission will begin. NASA's Kepler telescope has helped scientists identify more than 2,300 planet candidates, and confirm more than 100 plants. The telescope is helping to unravel more information about the universe, and gather details about what lies beyond those stars in the sky. Hundreds of Earth-size planet candidates...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is marking two milestones in the search for planets like Earth; the successful completion of the Kepler Space Telescope's 3 1/2- year prime mission and the beginning of an extended mission that could last as long as four years. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Scientists have used Kepler data to identify more than 2,300 planet candidates and confirm more than 100 planets. Kepler is teaching us the...

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The search for planets around other stars might have gotten a little easier now that a Lowell Observatory astronomer and her colleagues have developed a set of directions, per se, to aid others in the hunt for exoplanets. Publishing their work in the journal Astrophysical Letters, Evgenya Shkolnik and her collaborators examined new and existing data from known stars and brown dwarfs that are less than 300 million years old, as...

University of Notre Dame Justin Crepp, Freimann Assistant Professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, provided the high-contrast imaging observations that confirmed the first extrasolar planet discovered in a quadruple star system. He is a co-author on a paper about the discovery, “Planet Hunters: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet in a Quadruple Star System,” recently posted to the open-access arXiv.org, and submitted for publication to The Astrophysical Journal. Crepp’s...

BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. and the non-profit B612 Foundation have signed a contract for Ball to create prototype infrared imaging sensors for the Sentinel Mission, a deep space mission to protect Earth by providing early warning of threatening asteroids. Ball's detector design characterization initiates the first phase of developing Sentinel's 20-inch diameter, space-based infrared telescope. (Photo:...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Listen to the podcast “How Planets Form” with redOrbit's Dr. John Millis and planet-hunting expert Dr. Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester. In the past week, two new exoplanets have been confirmed; one by the Planet Hunters citizen science project that uses NASA's Kepler mission data, and the other by a European team. The existence of PH1 and the as-yet unnamed planet in Alpha Centauri will reignite the race to find an...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is a statement about the European Southern Observatory's latest exoplanet discovery from NASA's Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, Dr. John Grunsfeld. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "We congratulate the European Southern Observatory team for making this exciting new exoplanet discovery. For astronomers, the search for exoplanets helps us understand our place in the...

[WATCH VIDEO: Ultra-High Definition View of 2012 Venus Transit] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online It won't happen again until 2117, but one team ensured everyone at the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Reno, Nevada that they got plenty of data as Venus transited the Sun earlier this year. Jay Pasachoff of the Williams College and Caltech, Glenn Schneider of University of Arizona, Thomas Widemann of Paris...

Video 1 | Video 2 Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered a planet similar in mass to the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the nearest to Earth. Surpisingly, according to the astronomers, this planet which is just 4 light years away is also the lightest ever discovered around a star like our Sun. While the planet itself may be more similar in size and mass than Venus is to Earth, that’s where the good news ends. The...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists have found one particular planetary system that crams five planets into a region less than one twelfth the size of the Earth's orbit. Dr. Darin Ragozzine, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Florida, reported the team's findings of KOI-500 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. The planetary system is about 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, also called...