10 most amazing discoveries of the Kepler telescope

In early 2016, we celebrated the discovery and verification of the 4th exoplanet discovered by the Kepler telescope! And the list of candidates is constantly growing and currently stands at about 2009 people. Launched into space in XNUMX, the space observatory is already one of the most successful projects in the history of space exploration.

Although the telescope appeared to be shut down at the end of 2013 due to the failure of the second of its four road wheels, it was able to be put back into service a few months later. The new mission of the distinguished exoplanet hunter, called NASA K2, was made possible by the use of specialists from the US agency, which is somewhat less traditional than is usually the case in space missions. Since the telescope would not be able to operate with two working reaction wheels (at least three are needed), NASA scientists decided to use solar radiation pressure as a "virtual reaction wheel". This method proved successful in operating a damaged telescope. An excellent interactive presentation for astronomy lovers and all those who are passionate about hunting for the so-called exoplanets, he prepared in his online edition of the New York Times. The authors of the infographic have collected all the extrasolar planets discovered so far by the Kepler telescope and confirmed. Models of systems with the discovered planets, including the sizes of the Earth, the Sun and other space bodies close to us, are compiled and proportionally compared. Many layouts have visualizations showing how graphic designers present them based on the data they receive. There are also descriptions and links to relevant newspaper articles. Readers can find the full web address for the NYT presentation at http://goo.gl/xpRAd6. And we invite you to familiarize yourself with the list of the ten most amazing discoveries of the Kepler telescope.

Field of view of the Kepler telescope

1 The Exoplanet With The Longest Year We Know

Remember that we are talking about extrasolar planets, that is, orbiting stars other than our Sun - this needs to be clarified when we give the period of the object Kepler-421b around its Sun, an orange K-type star, This is 704 days. In our solar system, planets further from the star than Mars (a year is 687 days) rotate in much longer cycles (a year on Uranus lasts ... 84 Earth years!), but among the known exoplanets, Kepler-421b has the longest year.

2. Compact solar system

Six planets (11) have been found around the sun-like star Kepler-1, each larger than Earth, with the largest one the size of Neptune. Farthest from Kepler-11, it is not much further than Mercury from the Sun in the solar system. So where ours only begins, this arrangement ends. Scientists don't fully understand how it stays stable.

Compact planetary system

3. Giant mass ejections from stars

Compared to some of the stars observed by the Kepler telescope, our Sun is the epitome of softness (2). Scientists have recorded massive emissions, the size and intensity of which are millions of times greater than the “houses” we observe. Initially, astronomers thought that these were the so-called hot Jupiters or massive planets close to the star, but this theory was not confirmed. So now it's assumed that some distant stars are just so active that we wouldn't want them in our solar system.

4. Planet with four suns

The planet called PH1 (discovered not by NASA, but by the Planet Hunters group of amateur astronomers) is a gas giant orbiting in a quadruple system (3). Scientists are amazed at the stability of its orbit, but apparently it is able to somehow stay in this "crowd".

5. Superland

and the orange dwarf HIP 116454b is an exoplanet orbiting the orange dwarf so close that it only exists for nine days a year. However, at 2,5 times the diameter of the Earth, its mass is twelve times its mass, suggesting that it is a rocky planet, possibly also aquatic.

6. Rocking planet

Rocking like a spinning top is the gaseous planet Kepler-413b, sixty-five times as massive as Earth. It revolves around a binary system of orange and red dwarfs. More precisely, this means that its axis of rotation moves 4 degrees every eleven years.

7. Number of Earth-like planets in the Galaxy.

Scientists are still making their predictions about the number of planets in the Milky Way, including objects like Earth. These estimates are influenced by the results of subsequent observations. It must be remembered that the Kepler telescope observes only a small part of the Galaxy (5). According to the latest data, Earth-sized planets revolve around 17% of stars. And this, assuming that there are one hundred billion suns in the Milky Way, gives as many as 17 billion planets similar to ours in size. It is impossible to estimate the number of objects similar in all respects, because the indisputable twins of the Earth have not yet been discovered.

8 Planet Devoured By A Star

The heated atmosphere of WASP-12b, under the influence of the huge gravity of the star, expanded into a large oval, the diameter of which is about three times that of Jupiter. The outer regions of the atmosphere already cross the zone where the star's gravity balances the planet's gravity. Astronomers say the object is now filling its safe so-called Roche Surface, causing the planet's atmosphere to be swallowed up by the star. It is estimated that as a result of this process, the planet has about 10 million years left to live before it is completely consumed.

9. Earth 2.0

The planet Kepler-452b, announced by NASA in the middle of last year, is the first Earth-like planet found in the so-called life zone around its G2V parent star, just like our Sun. There is no conclusive evidence that it is a rocky object, but its density indicates that it is not a smaller version of a gas planet. The system is located at a distance of 1400 light years. The newly discovered planet has a diameter about 60% larger than Earth. Although its distance from its sun is almost the same as that of our planet (the so-called Goldilocks zone), some facts about the star Kepler-452b cool the enthusiasm somewhat. Due to its age of 6 billion years (1,5 billion more than the Sun), it is at a different stage in stellar evolution, being 10% larger than the Sun and 20% brighter. This means that Kepler-452b receives about 10% more energy from its star.

10. Not an alien megastructure?

According to the latest research by astronomers, unusual observations of the glow of the star KIC 8462852, fading at various intervals from five to eighty days a year, are associated with the presence of a large group of exometers in the vicinity of this celestial body. a body revolving around a star and being torn apart by its influence is not due to the existence there of gigantic structures built by some alien super-civilization. The Kepler telescope has been recording regular, repeating phenomena since 2009 in various places in space. They result from the rotation cycles of exoplanets around distant suns. However, KIC 8462852 exhibited strange, uneven dips in brightness—two small dips in 2009, one large dip in 2011, and a series of multiple dips in 2013. Interestingly, in some cases, the brightness of the star decreased by as much as 20%. In view of such strange observational results and the exclusion of many other causes, failures, errors or the presence of a dust cloud (the star is already relatively old), even scientists began to mutter about the possibility of some megastructures created by an advanced civilization in the vicinity of a star located on the border of the constellations Lute and Cygnus. (6 ). However, if the mentioned hypothetical comets have an eccentric orbit and appear in the vicinity of the star KIC 8462852 every few hundred days, their defragmentation and dusting explains such a large uneven amount of light coming from KIC 8462852.