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 […]

BoldlyGo Institute and NASA Sign Space Act Agreement for Joint Cooperation on Project Blue Mission “The Space Act Agreement is non-reimbursable, with no exchange of funds between NASA and BoldlyGo. It allows NASA employees – scientists and engineers – to interact with the Project Blue team through its mission development phases to help review mission design plans and to share scientific results on Alpha Centauri and exoplanets along with the […]

NASA Releases Kepler Survey Catalog with Hundreds of New Planet Candidates “NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet. With the release of this catalog, […]

Temperate Earth-Sized Planets Found in Extraordinarily Rich Planetary System TRAPPIST-1 , ESO “Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. Using ground and space telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the planets were all detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1. According to the paper appearing today in the journal Nature, three of the planets […]

Earth-mass Planet Found In The Habitable Zone Of Proxima Centauri, ESO “Astronomers using ESO telescopes and other facilities have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. This rocky world is a little more massive than […]

Keith’s note: Just in case you missed this post last Wednesday. NASA to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries During Media Teleconference “NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT Tuesday, May 10 to announce the latest discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. The briefing participants are: … Timothy Morton, associate research scholar at Princeton University in New Jersey …” False Positive Probabilities for all Keper […]

(Mostly) Thumbs Down on ExoNames, ManyWorlds “One of the co-discoverers of HD 149026 b is Debra Fischer, now a professor of astronomy at Yale University. Asked her view of the 31 new exoplanet names she replied: “It would take a big push to change the names of exoplanets in the published literature. Every future publication would need to cross-list the former name(s) and this would be awkward and somewhat time […]

NASA Media Teleconference to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries “NASA will host a news teleconference at 9 a.m. PDT (12 p.m. EDT) Thursday, July 23 to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope. The teleconference audio and visuals will be streamed live at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio“ Press briefing graphics Kepler Finds 12 Earth-sized Worlds In Stellar Habitable Zones, SETI Institute “The new catalog includes 12 candidates that are […]

Earth-like Tatooines From Star Wars May Be Common “Luke Skywalker’s home in “Star Wars” is the desert planet Tatooine, with twin sunsets because it orbits two stars. So far, only uninhabitable gas-giant planets have been identified circling such binary stars, and many researchers believe rocky planets cannot form there. Now, mathematical simulations show that Earth-like, solid planets such as Tatooine likely exist and may be widespread.”

Sun’s stroke keeps Kepler online, Nature “Wiemer had fashioned a crutch for Kepler using the only resource available: sunlight. Positioned so that its long side faces the Sun, the spacecraft leans against the pressure created by the onslaught of photons and balances using its two good wheels. With this approach, the team hoped to get within a factor of ten of Kepler’s original performance — but with additional software refinements, […]