Years after NASA ’s Kepler Space Telescope wasretiredfrom its Earth - sized planet - trace duty , the information it accumulate is still providing astronomers a chance to let out novel satellite . From the Kepler mission alone , a full of4,776candidates and confirmed planets are account . University of British Columbia ( UBC ) PhD bookman Michelle Kunimoto has just added another 17 to this number .
As delineate in a paper issue inThe Astronomical Journal , Kunimoto conducted an sovereign search of all ? 200,000 star observed in the initial four - yr Kepler mission , to see evidence of planets “ transiting ” across the stars .
" Every time a planet pass in front of a star , it blocks a component of that star ’s ignitor and causes a irregular reduction in the star ’s brightness , " Kunimoto said in astatement . " By receive these dips , known as transits , you’re able to start to piece together information about the planet , such as its size and how long it takes to orb . "
Using the same three - transportation minimal spotting criteria as the Kepler squad , Kunimoto discovered 17 new planetary candidates . Amongst these was the formally named KIC-7340288 b satellite . At around 1.5 clock time the sizing of Earth , this major planet is little enough to be considered jolting , as oppose to gaseous like the outer major planet of the Solar System . Furthermore , it also lies within the habitable zone of its star , where the planet ’s aerofoil temperatures could allow swimming water system to form .
" This major planet is about 1,000 unclouded - years aside , so we ’re not getting there anytime presently ! " Kunimoto promulgate . " But this is a really exciting uncovering , since there have only been 15 little , confirmed planets in the Habitable Zone found in Kepler data so far . "
With an orbital menstruum of only 142.5 day , the major planet is located 0.444 Astronomical Units ( 1 AU is the distance between Earth and our Sun ) from its star , around the same distance as Mercury is from the Sun . However , the major planet take in about a third of the light Earth get from the Sun .
The other 16 planet in this new find range in sizing from around two - thirds the size of Earth , one of the smallest planets found from Kepler so far , up to eight times the size of Earth . KIC-11350118 c , the smallest planet discover in Kunimoto ’s lookup , is in reality associated with a known system , calledKOI-4509 . Already notice around the hotshot is an Earth - sized planet with an orbital period of 12 24-hour interval .
Kunimoto ’s find was also not her first , having antecedently found four planets during her undergraduate degree . In future research Kunimoto and her colleague hope to carry out independent search of information from other mission , such as Kepler?s follow - upK2 , and the more recentTransiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite . This will bestow to their other work in calculate occurrence rate statistics of particular major planet .
" We ’ll be estimating how many planets are expected for star topology with different temperatures , " Jaymie Matthews , UBC professor and Kunimoto ’s PhD executive program , added . " A especially important resultant role will be finding a terrestrial inhabitable Zone planet occurrence rate . How many Earth - similar planets are there ? Stay tuned . "
