NASA | JPL-Caltech | Ames | Kepler | 2016 May 10
NASA's Kepler mission has verified 1,284 new planets -- the single largest finding of planets to date. ...
[img3="This artist's concept depicts select planetary discoveries made to date by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Credits: NASA/W. Stenzel"]https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/file ... ay2016.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]Analysis was performed on the Kepler space telescope's July 2015 planet candidate catalog, which identified 4,302 potential planets. For 1,284 of the candidates, the probability of being a planet is greater than 99 percent - the minimum required to earn the status of "planet." An additional 1,327 candidates are more likely than not to be actual planets, but they do not meet the 99 percent threshold and will require additional study. The remaining 707 are more likely to be some other astrophysical phenomena. This analysis also validated 984 candidates that have previously been verified by other techniques. ...
In the newly validated batch of planets, nearly 550 could be rocky planets like Earth based on size. Nine of these orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is the distance from a star where orbiting planets can have surface temperatures that allow liquid water to pool. With the addition of these nine, 21 exoplanets are now known to be members of this exclusive group. ...
More than 1,200 new planets confirmed using new technique for verifying Kepler data
Princeton University | 2016 May 10
False Positive Probabilities for All Kepler Objects of Interest:
1,284 Newly Validated Planets and 428 Likely False Positives - Timothy D. Morton et al
- Astrophysical Journal 822(2):86 (10 May 2016) DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/822/2/86
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1605.02825 > 10 May 2016