Keith’s note: I was on Al Jazeera Arabic TV tonight talking about recent exoplanet discoveries, life in the universe, etc. Since I was speaking through an interpreter (I used to be one too) I decided to use fruit instead of planets with their names – TOI 700e became the “apple planet” and LHS 475b became the “orange planet”. So yes, I was ‘comparing apples and oranges’. Audio
(more…)The Occurrence of Rocky Habitable Zone Planets Around Solar-Like Stars from Kepler Data “We present occurrence rates for rocky planets in the habitable zones (HZ) of main-sequence dwarf stars based on the Kepler DR25 planet candidate catalog and Gaia-based stellar properties. … We estimate with 95% confidence that, on average, the nearest HZ planet around G and K dwarfs is about 6 pc away, and there are about 4 HZ […]
Breakthrough Watch and European Southern Observatory Achieve First Light on Upgraded Planet-finding Instrument “Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, said: “We’re delighted to collaborate with the ESO in designing, building, installing and now using this innovative new instrument. If there are Earth-like planets around Alpha Centauri A and B, that’s huge news for everyone on our planet.” “ESO is glad to bring its expertise, existing infrastructure, and observing […]
FWIW @NASAKepler has discovered 2,681 confirmed exoplanets and 2,899 candidate exoplanets. Assuming that that they're all confirmed that's 5,580 planets at a cost $125,448.03 each. pic.twitter.com/p84pT10x29 — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) October 30, 2018 NASA Retires Kepler Space Telescope “After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than stars – NASA’s Kepler space telescope has […]
NASA Media Telecon to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries, 26 Feb. “NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EST (18:00 UTC), Wednesday, Feb. 26, to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.” Kepler Has Discovered 715 New Extrasolar Planets “NASA’s Kepler mission announced Wednesday the discovery of 715 new planets. These newly-verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like our own solar […]
The Numbers Are Astronomical, Seth Shostak, Huffington Post “So check out the Milky Way next time you’re outside the glare of city lights, and ruminate on the thought that at least 33 billion habitable planets are somewhere up there. But that’s just the local population. We can’t see the entire universe, but the fraction we can see is studded with roughly 150 billion other galaxies; each with its own complement […]
Keith’s 2:30 pm EST note: NASA Ames PAO just hosted a media briefing on new Kepler news being released today i.e. “22±8 % of the Sun-like stars have an Earth-like planet”‘ (per Tweet below). One small problem, they did not set the number of guests who could connect via on Adobe Connect so a lot of media were unable to connect untill well after the media briefing was underway. But […]
Hubble Spots Blue Planet [With Video], NASA/ESA/STSCI “Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have, for the first time, determined the true color of a planet orbiting another star. If seen up close this planet, known as HD 189733b, would be a deep cobalt blue, reminiscent of Earth’s color as seen from space. But that’s where the similarities end. This “deep blue dot” is a huge gas giant orbiting very […]
Kepler Mission Manager Update “The operations staff at Ball Aerospace did a wonderful job at developing and implementing PRS. As a result, the spacecraft is not in an emergency condition, and work can be conducted at a more deliberate pace. For the next week or so, we will contact the spacecraft on a daily basis to ensure PRS continues to operate as expected.”