NASA | JPL-Caltech | Ames | Kepler | 2016 July 18
[img3="This artist's concept shows NASA's Kepler Space Telescope on its K2 mission. In July 2016, an international team of astronomers announced they had discovered more than 100 new planets using this telescope. The batch includes four planets in the size range of Earth that are orbiting a single dwarf star, depicted in this illustration. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)"]http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/kepler/2 ... 698-16.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]An international team of astronomers has discovered and confirmed a treasure trove of new worlds using NASA's Kepler spacecraft on its K2 mission. Out of 197 initial planet candidates, scientists have confirmed 104 planets outside our solar system. Among the confirmed is a planetary system comprising four promising planets that could be rocky.
These four planets, all between 20 and 50 percent larger than Earth by diameter, are orbiting the M dwarf star K2-72, found 181 light-years away in the direction of the Aquarius constellation. The host star is less than half the size of the sun and less bright. The planets' orbital periods range from five-and-a-half to 24 days, and two of them may experience irradiation levels from their star comparable to those on Earth. Despite their tight orbits -- closer than Mercury's orbit around our sun -- the possibility that life could arise on a planet around such a star cannot be ruled out, according to lead author Ian Crossfield, a Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson.
The researchers achieved this extraordinary "roundup" of exoplanets by combining data with follow-up observations by Earth-based telescopes including the North Gemini telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, the Automated Planet Finder of the University of California Observatories, and the Large Binocular Telescope operated by the University of Arizona. The discoveries are published online in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. ...
Hawaii Astronomers & Telescopes Haul in 100 New Planets
Institute for Astronomy | University of Hawaii | 2016 July 18
Gemini Observatory Instrumental in Latest Exoplanet Harvest
Gemini Observatory | 2016 July 18
More than 100 Planets Confirmed in Single Trove
W. M. Keck Observatory | 2016 July 18
197 Candidates and 104 Validated Planets in K2’s First Five Fields - Ian J. M. Crossfield et al