WASHINGTON — The list of known exoplanets in the galaxy just got bigger, thanks to the first observations from NASA’s new Kepler space telescope, which found five new lightweight worlds orbiting distant stars.
“I would like to announce today the discovery of five exoplanets by Kepler,” said Kepler science director William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., here today at the 215th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.
The planet-hunting Kepler, which hopes to discover alien Earths, also found an odd object orbiting a star and is measuring the quakes that ripple across stellar surface.
The five newfound planets are all much larger than the Earth-sized bodies Kepler was designed to find, with one coming in at around the size of Neptune, and the other four measuring larger than Jupiter.
All five planets orbit very close to their stars, with orbital periods of around three to four days, and so are very hot. Their temperatures are above those of molten lava; even iron would melt on their surfaces.
Read the full article by Andrea Thompson from Space.com here.
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