Publication Date:
2010-01-09
Description:
The Kepler mission was designed to determine the frequency of Earth-sized planets in and near the habitable zone of Sun-like stars. The habitable zone is the region where planetary temperatures are suitable for water to exist on a planet's surface. During the first 6 weeks of observations, Kepler monitored 156,000 stars, and five new exoplanets with sizes between 0.37 and 1.6 Jupiter radii and orbital periods from 3.2 to 4.9 days were discovered. The density of the Neptune-sized Kepler-4b is similar to that of Neptune and GJ 436b, even though the irradiation level is 800,000 times higher. Kepler-7b is one of the lowest-density planets (approximately 0.17 gram per cubic centimeter) yet detected. Kepler-5b, -6b, and -8b confirm the existence of planets with densities lower than those predicted for gas giant planets.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Borucki, William J -- Koch, David -- Basri, Gibor -- Batalha, Natalie -- Brown, Timothy -- Caldwell, Douglas -- Caldwell, John -- Christensen-Dalsgaard, Jorgen -- Cochran, William D -- DeVore, Edna -- Dunham, Edward W -- Dupree, Andrea K -- Gautier, Thomas N 3rd -- Geary, John C -- Gilliland, Ronald -- Gould, Alan -- Howell, Steve B -- Jenkins, Jon M -- Kondo, Yoji -- Latham, David W -- Marcy, Geoffrey W -- Meibom, Soren -- Kjeldsen, Hans -- Lissauer, Jack J -- Monet, David G -- Morrison, David -- Sasselov, Dimitar -- Tarter, Jill -- Boss, Alan -- Brownlee, Don -- Owen, Toby -- Buzasi, Derek -- Charbonneau, David -- Doyle, Laurance -- Fortney, Jonathan -- Ford, Eric B -- Holman, Matthew J -- Seager, Sara -- Steffen, Jason H -- Welsh, William F -- Rowe, Jason -- Anderson, Howard -- Buchhave, Lars -- Ciardi, David -- Walkowicz, Lucianne -- Sherry, William -- Horch, Elliott -- Isaacson, Howard -- Everett, Mark E -- Fischer, Debra -- Torres, Guillermo -- Johnson, John Asher -- Endl, Michael -- MacQueen, Phillip -- Bryson, Stephen T -- Dotson, Jessie -- Haas, Michael -- Kolodziejczak, Jeffrey -- Van Cleve, Jeffrey -- Chandrasekaran, Hema -- Twicken, Joseph D -- Quintana, Elisa V -- Clarke, Bruce D -- Allen, Christopher -- Li, Jie -- Wu, Haley -- Tenenbaum, Peter -- Verner, Ekaterina -- Bruhweiler, Frederick -- Barnes, Jason -- Prsa, Andrej -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2010 Feb 19;327(5968):977-80. doi: 10.1126/science.1185402. Epub 2010 Jan 7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. William.J.Borucki@nasa.gov〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20056856" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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