Ames/JPL: Citizen Scientists Find New World with NASA Telescope

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Ames/JPL: Citizen Scientists Find New World with NASA Telescope

Post by bystander » Tue Jan 08, 2019 1:14 am

Citizen Scientists Find New World with NASA Telescope
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Ames Research Center | Kepler | 2019 Jan 07
Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, citizen scientists have discovered a planet roughly twice the size of Earth located within its star's habitable zone, the range of orbital distances where liquid water may exist on the planet's surface. The new world, known as K2-288Bb, could be rocky or could be a gas-rich planet similar to Neptune. Its size is rare among exoplanets - planets beyond our solar system. ...

Located 226 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, the planet lies in a stellar system known as K2-288, which contains a pair of dim, cool M-type stars separated by about 5.1 billion miles (8.2 billion kilometers) - roughly six times the distance between Saturn and the Sun. The brighter star is about half as massive and large as the Sun, while its companion is about one-third the Sun's mass and size. The new planet, K2-288Bb, orbits the smaller, dimmer star every 31.3 days. ...

K2-288Bb: A Small Temperate Planet in a Low-mass Binary System Discovered by Citizen Scientists ~ Adina D. Feinstein et al
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