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Website - nasa.gov/kepler
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Kepler on Wikipedia
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Developer - NASA
Website - nasa.gov/kepler
facebook.com/NASAExoplanets
Kepler on Wikipedia
https://youtu.be/65NMuKbZUUQ
KEPLER 186F - LIFE AFTER EARTH - Documentary
Published on Jun 4, 2014
Quote:
If Alien exist where do they live and how do they live?
Scientists say a world that's 490 light-years away qualifies as the first confirmed Earth-sized exoplanet that could sustain life as we know it — but in an environment like nothing we've ever seen.
The planet, known as Kepler-186f, is "more of an Earth cousin than an Earth twin," Elisa Quintana, an astronomer at the SETI Institute at NASA Ames Research Center, told the journal Science. Quintana is the lead author of a report on the planet published by Science this week.
"This discovery does confirm that Earth-sized planets do exist in the habitable zones of other stars," Quintana said during a Thursday news briefing at NASA Headquarters.
Kepler-186f goes around an M-type dwarf star that's smaller and cooler than our sun. But it orbits much closer to its parent star than Earth does, within what would be Mercury's orbit in our own solar system. Those two factors combine to produce an environment that could allow for liquid water on the surface, assuming that the planet had a heat-trapping atmosphere.
"The star, to our eyes, would look slightly orange-y," about a third again as big as our sun but only a third as bright, said co-author Thomas Barclay, a staff scientist for NASA's Kepler mission who is also affiliated with NASA and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. At midday, Kepler-186f's landscape might look similar to what we see on Earth an hour before sunset, he told NBC News.
Or it might not: If the planet lacked an atmosphere to retain and redistribute its sun's warmth, it would be a cold, dry, lifeless world.
Kepler-186f probably rates as the most potentially Earthlike planet discovered so far, said Jim Kasting, a geoscientist at Penn State University who did not play a role in the Science study. But he told NBC News that it's still "less likely to be habitable than planets around more sunlike stars." Even better prospects for alien habitability might well be identified in the months and years to come.
How the world was found
Kepler-186f is just the latest discovery to be pulled out of terabytes' worth of data collected by the Kepler mission. Before it went on the fritz last year, the Kepler space telescope stared at more than 150,000 stars in a patch of sky, looking for the telltale dimming of starlight as planets passed over the stars' disks. Nearly 1,000 exoplanets have been confirmed using Kepler data, and almost 3,000 more candidates are still awaiting confirmation.
It takes years of observation to confirm the pattern of dimming and brightening that's associated with alien planets, particularly if the planets are small and far from their parent stars. In February, astronomers reported that at least four worlds circled the dwarf star known as Kepler-186 or KOI-571. In this week's Science paper, Quintana and her colleagues confirm the existence of Kepler-186f as the fifth and outermost world.
They report that Kepler-186f is about 10 percent wider than Earth, tracing a 130-day orbit around its sun at a mean distance of 0.35 astronomical units. (An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and our sun, which is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers.) That would put Kepler-186f on the cooler, outer side of the star's habitable zone — the range of orbital distances where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface.
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of other planets in their stars' habitable zone, but those prospects are super-Earth-size. Smaller habitable-zone candidates also have been found, but they have yet to be confirmed as planets.
Barclay said Kepler-186f was particularly promising because it's less than 1.5 times the size of Earth. Planets in that size range are more likely to be rocky with a thinner atmosphere, like Earth, Mars and Venus. But worlds exceeding that size stand a better chance of retaining a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, like the giant planet Neptune.
"While those planets also could be rocky, they don't remind us of home," Barclay said.
Could we actually detect signs of life on Kepler-186f? That's a tough one. The astronomers behind the discovery acknowledge that the planet might be just too far away for follow-up studies. The SETI Institute has been searching for radio signals from the Kepler-186 system over a wide frequency range (1 to 10 GHz), but so far nothing has been detected.
https://youtu.be/XGtRCJUAJHo
Kepler space telescope, the planet hunter
Published on Feb 3, 2016
Quote:
A thin atmosphere made of nitrogen and oxygen has allowed life to thrive on Earth. But nature is full of surprises. Many exoplanets discovered by the Kepler mission are enveloped by thick, hydrogen-rich atmospheres that are probably incompatible with life as we know it," said Ian Crossfield, the University of Arizona astronomer who led the study that yielded the planets.
NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, discovered the star, which has three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, a region where surface temperatures could be moderate enough for liquid water and perhaps life, to exist.
The star, EPIC 201367065, is a cool red M-dwarf about half the size and mass of our own sun. At a distance of 150 light years, the star ranks among the top 10 nearest stars known to have transiting planets. The star's proximity means it's bright enough for astronomers to study the planets' atmospheres to determine whether they are like Earth's atmosphere and possibly conducive to life.
A paper describing the find by astronomers at the University of Arizona, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Hawaii, Manoa, and other institutions has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal and is freely available on the arXiv website . NASA and the National Science Foundation funded the research.
Co-authors of the paper include Joshua Schlieder of NASA Ames Research Center and colleagues from Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S.
The three planets are 2.1, 1.7 and 1.5 times the size of Earth. The smallest and outermost planet, at 1.5 Earth radii, orbits far enough from its host star that it receives levels of light from its star similar to those received by Earth from the sun, said UC Berkeley graduate student Erik Petigura. He discovered the planets Jan. 6 while conducting a computer analysis of the Kepler data NASA has made available to astronomers. In order from farthest to closest to their star, the three planets receive 10.5, 3.2 and 1.4 times the light intensity of Earth, Petigura calculated.
"Most planets we have found to date are scorched. This system is the closest star with lukewarm transiting planets," Petigura said. "There is a very real possibility that the outermost planet is rocky like Earth, which means this planet could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans."
University of Hawaii astronomer Andrew Howard noted that extrasolar planets are discovered by the hundreds these days, though many astronomers are left wondering if any of the newfound worlds are really like Earth. The newly discovered planetary system will help resolve this question, he said.
"We've learned in the past year that planets the size and temperature of Earth are common in our Milky Way galaxy," Howard said. "We also discovered some Earth-size planets that appear to be made of the same materials as our Earth, mostly rock and iron."
After Petigura found the planets in the Kepler light curves, the team quickly employed telescopes in Chile, Hawaii and California to characterize the star's mass, radius, temperature and age. Two of the telescopes involved, the Automated Planet Finder on Mount Hamilton near San Jose, California, and the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, are University of California facilities.
The next step will be observations with other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to take the spectroscopic fingerprint of the molecules in the planetary atmospheres. If these warm, nearly Earth-size planets have puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres, Hubble will see the telltale signal, Petigura said.
The discovery is all the more remarkable, he said, because the Kepler telescope lost two reaction wheels that kept it pointing at a fixed spot in space.
Kepler was reborn in 2014 as 'K2' with a clever strategy of pointing the telescope in the plane of Earth's orbit, the ecliptic, to stabilize the spacecraft. Kepler is now back to mining the cosmos for planets by searching for eclipses or "transits," as planets pass in front of their host stars and periodically block some of the starlight.
"This discovery proves that K2, despite being somewhat compromised, can still find exciting and scientifically compelling planets," Petigura said. "This ingenious new use of Kepler is a testament to the ingenuity of the scientists and engineers at NASA. This discovery shows that Kepler can still do great science."
https://youtu.be/G_zcEgx1IgQ
NASA’s Kepler mission discovers bigger, older cousin to Earth
Published on Jul 23, 2015
Quote:
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the “habitable zone” around a sun-like star. The newly discovered Kepler-452b is the smallest planet to date discovered orbiting in the habitable zone -- the area around a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of an orbiting planet -- of a G2-type star, like our sun. The confirmation of Kepler-452b brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030.
https://youtu.be/RgzUUI1LAJc
NASA's Kepler telescope finds Earth's cousin - BBC News
Published on Jul 23, 2015
Quote:
The NASA space agency has found a near-Earth-sized planed in a habitable zone similar to our sun. Scientists say Kepler 452B is the closest match to Earth yet. It's about 1400 light years away.
https://youtu.be/bmV1D_nyYx4
NASA's Kepler reveals potential new worlds
Published on Jun 19, 2017
"NASA Releases Kepler Survey Catalog with Hundreds of New Planet Candidates"Quote:
Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope is our first mission capable of identifying Earth-size planets around other stars. On Monday, June 19, 2017, scientists announced the results from the latest Kepler candidate catalog of the mission at a press conference at NASA's Ames Research Center.
June 19, 2017
https://youtu.be/D0CUaiNJP_M
Kepler telescope finds 10 new Earth-like planets
Published on Jun 19, 2017
"NASA's Kepler reveals 10 new potentially Earth-like planets"
The Kepler space telescope's latest and most complete planet catalog adds 219 new candidates, including one that could be a close cousin to Earth.
by Amanda Kooser
June 19, 2017