Iain McDonald, at the time an STFC-funded postdoctoral researcher, working with Dr Kerins. So Kepler just sat and watched them for three months.”įollowing the development of specialized analysis methods, candidate signals were finally uncovered last year using a new search algorithm presented in a study led by Dr. But there are hundreds of millions of stars towards the center of our Galaxy. The chance that a background star is affected this way by a planet is tens to hundreds of millions to one against. “To see the effect at all requires almost perfect alignment between the foreground planetary system and a background star. So Kepler just sat and watched them for three months.” Kerins adds: “The chance that a background star is affected this way by a planet is tens to hundreds of millions to one against. Eamonn Kerins, Principal Investigator for the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) grant that funded the work. “To see the effect at all requires almost perfect alignment between the foreground planetary system and a background star,” said Dr. The aim was to look for evidence of an exoplanet and its host star temporarily bending and magnifying the light from a background star as it passes by the line of sight. To find an exoplanet using the microlensing effect the team searched through Kepler data collected between April and July 2016 when it regularly monitored millions of stars close to the center of the Galaxy. PhD student, David Specht from The University of Manchester is the lead author on the new research. Kepler’s very pixelated view of the sky required specialized techniques to recover the planet signal. The planet is not visible but its gravity affected the light observed from a faint star at the center of the image (circled). The two images show the region as seen by Kepler (left) and by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) from the ground. The view of the region close to the Galactic Centre centered where the planet was found. The study has been submitted to the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The system was found using gravitational microlensing, a prediction of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and is the first planet to be discovered from space in this way. The exoplanetary system is twice as distant as any seen previously by Kepler, which found over 2,700 confirmed planets before ceasing operations in 2018. The exoplanet, K2-201Lb, is almost identical to Jupiter in terms of its mass and its distance from its sun was discovered using data obtained in 2016 by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Credit: NASA Ames/W StenzelĪ new study by an international team of astrophysicists, led by the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics has presented the amazing new discovery of a near-identical twin of Jupiter orbiting a star at a colossal distance of 17,000 light years from Earth. Kepler leaves a legacy of more than 2,600 exoplanet discoveries. On October 30, 2018, NASA announced that Kepler ran out of fuel and would be retired within its current and safe orbit, away from Earth. All rights reserved.Artist’s conception of the Kepler Space Telescope observing planets transiting a distant star. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition.