Kepler telescope discovers first five exoplanets

NASA’s Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

Kepler’s high sensitivity to both small and large planets enabled the discovery of the exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. The discoveries were announced Monday by the members of the Kepler science team during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.

“These observations contribute to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets,” said William Borucki of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Borucki is the mission’s science principal investigator. “The discoveries also show that our science instrument is working well. Indications are that Kepler will meet all its science goals.”

Known as “hot Jupiters” because of their high masses and extreme temperatures, the new exoplanets range in size from similar to Neptune to larger than Jupiter.

Xinhua