Tag: Kepler Space Telescope

New Kepler Planets Confirmed!

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In a major announcement this week, researchers with the Kepler Space Telescope science team have confirmed the existence of 1,284 new planets that had originally been found by Kepler.  This is a huge leap in the number of confirmed planets, bringing the total to over 2,300. The previous science data collection done by Kepler was completed in 2013, so why is this new news? Well the exciting part is that these are confirmed planets.  Usually when Kepler detects a signal indicating a potential planet, it needs to be verified by using some of the larger ground-based telescopes.  Kepler is not immune...

Incredible Exoplanets

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Out of the over 2000 confirmed exoplanets, not one has been seen in the conventional sense, where we would see it’s surface, map out features and colours, and understand it’s atmosphere or surface from what we saw.  Instead all the knowledge we have of exoplanets is based on the light we see.  How big is the dip in the Kepler Telescope’s light curve? What absorption features do the reflected light of this planet show? This information is the result of careful analysis and brilliant inference, since the planets themselves are immeasurably tiny and hard to spot next to their giant...