Kepler telescope looks at 156,000 stars, finds 1,100+ planet candidates, 54 in habitable zone, 5 earth-size

The following video discusses the discoveries of the Kepler mission so far:

From the video description:

NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered its first Earth-size planet candidates and its first candidates in the habitable zone, a region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Five of the potential planets are near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of smaller, cooler stars than our sun.

Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system. Located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, Kepler-11 is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury’s.

More info on these announcements:

A Wealth of Worlds: Kepler Spacecraft Finds 6 New Exoplanets and Hints at 1,200 More

Thirty million kilometers away, trailing the pale blue dot that is Earth as it orbits the sun, is a spacecraft designed to find some of the countless other pale blue dots that may speckle the galaxy. NASA launched this spacecraft, known as Kepler, in 2009 to take a census of Earth-like planets in the hopes of figuring out how common—or how rare—are the conditions under which life has thrived here.

The Kepler mission finds planets by looking for a drop in star brightness, as seen here:

More on the Kepler mission in this mission overview:

See also:
– How the Earth Works
– How Water Works

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