![]() “We have found what are probably the last planets ever discovered by Kepler, in data taken while the spacecraft was literally running on fumes,” says Andrew Vanderburg, assistant professor of physics in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. This Neptune-sized candidate orbits its star in around 10 days, and is slightly farther away, 1,200 light years from Earth. The planet candidate is EPIC 246251988 b - the largest of the three worlds at almost four times the size of the Earth. The two validated planets are K2-416 b, a planet that is about 2.6 times the size of the Earth and that orbits its star about every 13 days, and K2-417 b, a slightly larger planet that is just over three times Earth’s size and that circles its star every 6.5 days. For their size and proximity to their stars, both planets are considered “hot mini-Neptunes.” They are located about 400 light years from Earth. The scientists determined that two of the stars each host a planet, while the third hosts a planet “candidate” that has yet to be verified. The team combed through the telescope’s last week of high-quality data and spotted three stars, in the same part of the sky, that appeared to dim briefly. Now, astronomers at MIT and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, with the help of citizen scientists, have discovered what may be the last planets that Kepler gazed upon before going dark. 30, 2018, its fuel tanks depleted, the spacecraft was officially retired. In its last days, the telescope kept recording the brightness of stars as it was running out of fuel. Over nine and a half years, the spacecraft trailed the Earth, scanning the skies for periodic dips in starlight that could signal the presence of a planet crossing in front of its star. Over half were discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, a resilient observatory that far outlasted its original planned mission. More than 5,000 planets are confirmed to exist beyond our solar system. ![]()
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