Tatooine-like planets may be common
Exoplanets—planets in star systems other than our own—have been found in orbit around single stars, with
a lone exception: Kepler-16b is circumbinary, having two host
stars in close orbit. Now, researchers workin...
Kepler-20′s oddball planet assortment challenges models of planet formation
NASA's press conference on the newly discovered Earth-sized planets has just concluded, and most of the time was spent reiterating what was in our earlier report. Most of the value of listening in came...
Kepler team spots Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like star
Just two weeks after the confirmation of a planet that's within the habitable zone of a distant star, the Kepler team is back with the discovery of two Earth-sized planets orbiting in what is now...
Sun-like star hosts Kepler’s first confirmed habitable zone planet
This week, NASA is playing host to a conference dedicated to the results pouring in from Kepler, its first dedicated planet-hunting probe. The space-based telescope spots planets as they pass in front of their...
NASA: Kepler candidates include dozens of Earth-sized planets
When NASA scheduled a press briefing to talk about Kepler results, the safe assumption was that the focus would be on the system it had spotted with six planets orbiting a single star. That...
NASA spots six planets in tight orbits around sun-like star
Today, the team running NASA's Kepler observatory is announcing the largest collection of planets yet spotted orbiting a single star. That star, now called Kepler-11, hosts at least a half-dozen planets, most in orbits...
Earth + 0.4: smallest exoplanet spotted
Today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, NASA's Kepler team announced the discovery of the smallest exoplanet yet identified. The planet, called Kepler-10b, is only 1.4 times the diameter of the Eart...
Kepler scientist tries to stop galaxy-sized rumors he started
One of the scientists who works on the Kepler planet-hunting mission, Dimitar Sasselov, inadvertently set off a bit of a controversy when he appeared to announce that its first big data release implied that our galaxy is...
Latest Kepler data includes over 700 exoplanet candidates
Today should be a historic moment for the field of astronomy. With a single data release, the team behind NASA's Kepler instrument has nearly doubled the number of extrasolar planets we're aware of, including...
NASA planet hunters may only be releasing limited data set
Scientific data sharing has become big news in the wake of the theft of e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit and ensuing investigations. Although the CRU researchers appear to have had...
An embarrassment of Kepler riches, planetary and otherwise
Earlier this week, we described a brief announcement from the team behind the Kepler space observatory, designed to spot the transit of planets in front of their host stars. That announcement...
Brief: NASA’s Kepler spots 5 planets in its first 6 weeks of data
The American Astronomical Society is holding its latest meeting (the 215th!) this week, and the team behind NASA's Kepler probe has used the opportunity to announce the first discoveries for the new probe. The first and easiest planets to spot are the so-called "hot Jupiters," massive planets that orbit...
