The equipment of the Kepler telescope finds 11 new Solar System
CABO CANE PLANTATION, the USA (Reuters) – the space telescope Kepler of the NASA in charge to look for planets is shortage 11 new planetary systems, including one with five planets that orbit more near their star than Mercury of the Sun, said scientific Thursday.
The discoveries lift the confirmed extra-solar planet list to 729, including 60 attributed to the team of Kepler. The telescope, sent to the space in March of 2009, can detect slight at intervals regular variations in the amount of light coming from stars. The scientists can determine if the changes cause them planets in orbit.
The scientists of Kepler have other 2,300 planets candidates hoping additional confirmation.
No of the planetary systems just shortages are like our Solar System, although Kepler-33, a star that is older and greater than the Sun, approaches in terms of absolute numbers. Account with five planets, against the eight of our Solar System, but the quintet flies more near its star than Mercury of the Sun.
The planets vary in size from approximately 1.5 times the diameter of the Earth to five times the diameter of the Earth. The scientists have still not determined if they are solid rocky bodies like the Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercurio, or if they are full of gas like Jupiter, Saturn, Urano and Neptune.
The team of Kepler previously found a star with six confirmed planets and a second system with five planets, said to the planetary scientist Jack Lissauer, with Ames Research Center of the NASA in Moffett Field, California.
Nine of the new systems contain two planets and one has three, lifting the total number of planets just shortages to 26. All are more near their stars than Venus of the Sun.
“This has tripled the number of stars that we know that they have more of a planet in transit, so that is the great question”, Lissauer said to Reuters.
“We are beginning to think in terms of planetary systems instead of only planets: Do all trend to have similar sizes? Which is the distance? It is unusual the Solar System in those aspects? ”, it said.
Kepler is following more than 150,000 stars in the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra.
The investigation appears in four publications different in the Astrophysical Journal and the Monthly Notices from the Royal Astronomical Society.