Tag: The Astrophysical Journal

  • Nation & World

    Kepler ‘rising from the ashes’

    Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, the Kepler spacecraft is alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler’s “second life.”

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Water worlds surface

    Astronomers have found a planetary system orbiting the star Kepler-62. This five-planet system has two worlds in the habitable zone — the distance from their star at which they receive enough light and warmth for liquid water to theoretically exist on their surfaces.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Search for Earth’s twin shows promise

    The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the new analysis of Kepler data that shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury.

    3 minutes