NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was launched into space in March 2009. Over the years, the telescope has observed hundreds of thousands of stars and identified thousands of exoplanets (planets outside the solar system).
Now, astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin in the USA have discovered the last planets Kepler saw, which completed its mission in 2018. The findings were published today via the Royal Astronomical Society.
Of the three planets Kepler observed, two are 400 light-years away and the other is 1200 light-years away.
Kepler continued to record the brightness of stars in his final days. On October 30, 2018, Jesus ran out of fuel and officially completed his mission. Researchers led by Professor Andrew Vanderburg and Elyse Incha also analyzed data from the last week of the vehicle and reached three stars.
After that, it was determined that two of the stars host a planet. It was reported that the third star may have an exoplanet candidate that has not yet been confirmed. In its statement, NASA added that the dimensions of this trio are between Earth and Neptune and that they are close to their stars.
The researchers say that the smallest of the confirmed planets, K2-416b, is 2.6 times the size of Earth, while it orbits its star, a red dwarf, approximately every 13 days. The second is K2-417b, which is slightly larger than three times the size of Earth and orbits its star every 6.5 days. Located 400 light-years away, both planets are described as “hot mini-Neptunes” because of their size and proximity to their stars.
The yet unconfirmed planet that Kepler observed is named EPIC 246251988 b. It is the largest of the trio as it is almost four times the size of Earth. The planet candidate, which is similar in size to Neptune, is 1200 light-years away from us and revolves around its star in 10 days.
Kepler Space Telescope, which has been on the mission for 9.5 years, has discovered more than 2600 exoplanets during this time. The identification of more than 5000 exoplanets so far is also an indication of how useful the vehicle is in planetary exploration. One of the researchers, Elyse Incha, added that data from Kepler could still lead to many more discoveries.
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