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Kepler space telescope

Exoplanet hunter Kepler finds 5 new planets

Tue, 01/05/2010 - 10:28 by Jamie Anderson

Los Angeles, CA, January 5 -- NASA's planet-seeking Kepler spacecraft, filled in some of the blanks and unveiled five hitherto unknown planets in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Kepler detects five exoplanets

Tue, 01/05/2010 - 08:53 by harsheeb

Washington -- The Kepler space telescope has discovered five exoplanets, said U.S. scientists searching for an Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like atmosphere.

An exoplanet is a planet that orbits a star other than our sun and, therefore, is beyond the solar system containing Earth. About 420 exoplanets have been discovered since the first was detected in 1995.

The Kepler telescope, launched last March, is examining more than 100,000 stars in the constellation Cygnus. The first 43 days of Kepler's findings were announced Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. Another eight months of findings has yet to be analyzed, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Kepler telescope begins operations

Thu, 05/14/2009 - 11:44 by Salinder Kumar

Moffett Feild, Calif. -- The U.S. space agency says its Kepler Space Telescope has started its 3 1/2-year search for Earth-like worlds among more than 100,000 stars.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said Kepler, launched in March, has the ability to find planets as small as Earth that orbit sun-like stars at distances where temperatures are right for possible lakes and oceans.

"Now the fun begins," said William Borucki, Kepler's principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center, located at Moffett Field, Calif. "We are all really excited to start sorting through the data and discovering the planets."

NASA scientists and engineers have spent the two months Kepler has been in orbit checking and calibrating its instruments.

Kepler space telescope ready for service

Thu, 04/16/2009 - 23:34 by Shruti Sharma

Pasadena, Calif -- The U.S. space agency says its Kepler space telescope has obtained "first light" images of the sky where it will soon start looking for Earth-like planets.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said the images show the 3 1/2-year mission's target patch of sky -- a vast starry field in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way galaxy.

NASA said one Kepler image shows a 100-square-degree portion of the sky that contains an estimated 14 millions stars -- more than 100,000 of which were selected as ideal candidates for planet hunting.