Astronomers discover new exoplanet similar in size to Earth; Planet Kepler-21b found using space and ground-based observations
Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - 18:30
in Astronomy & Space
The NASA Kepler Mission is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist, and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. It now has another planet to add to its growing list. Researchers have shown that one of the brightest stars in the Kepler star field has a planet with a radius only 1.6 that of Earth's radius and a mass no greater that 10 earth masses, circling its parent star with a 2.8 day period.