Saturday, June 19, 2010

NASA Discovers 300 Planets outside Solar system

NASA has proclaimed that it has discovered as many as 300 planets surrounding the solar system. As per their estimations, these planets are as large as the size of Earth.

The observations have been made from Kepler orbiting telescope, which was placed in the orbit in March, last year. The spacecraft has identified the indications of a planet crossing nearly 700 stars.

The lead author of the current study, William Borucki, said that the existence of the planets has not been given any approval from other scientists, as there are rooms for mistakes in identifying them.

In order to confirm, more detailed studies are to be conducted by the team. Kepler has been noting the intensity of as many as 156,097 stars in Cygnus and Lyra. They are trying to identifying any reduction in their brightness due to the presence of any planet in front of them.
The planets discovered in the current study have been termed as `candidate planets'.
The report was compiled on May 25 and presented on June 14. Kepler researchers observed the stars and the spotted planets for nearly 33.5 days.
The team observed as many as 12,000 stars losing brightness with the progress in their motion.

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