kepler

NASA's retired Kepler Space Telescope, which was designed to study the Milky Way Galaxy and look for exoplanets may help researchers unveil why some of these planets have, what is called a "size gap". Over the years, more than 5000 exoplanets have been discovered. These planets have different sizes and masses as some are more massive than the Earth. Now, scientists may have come across a reason why the exoplanets are shrinking in size. Know what experts say about the phenomena.Why exoplanets are shrinking?According to…

With the help of citizen scientists, astronomers discovered what may be the last three planets that the Kepler Space Telescope saw before it was retired. This illustration depicts NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which retired in October 2018, and three planets discovered in its final days of data. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech (K. Walbolt)In its final days of operation in 2018, <span class="glossaryLink" aria-describedby="tt" data-cmtooltip="<div class=glossaryItemTitle>NASA</div><div…

Five years since the Kepler Space Telescope was retired, a team of astronomers believe they’ve found exoplanets captured by some of the veteran observatory’s last light.What Is Planet Nine and Why Can’t We Find It?Kepler launched to space in 2009 with one essential task: find new worlds. In its nearly decade-long tenure in solar orbit, Kepler found over 2,600 exoplanets, including some that lurk in the so-called “Goldilocks Zone” of habitability, suggesting that they may have conditions suitable for fostering life.Kepler…

Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster and Starman manikin shortly after launch on February 6, 2018. Photo: SpaceXBeing the space nerd that I am, I often imagine a museum filled with the most important objects ever sent to space. We couldn’t possibly build a place like this, but we can speculate as to which human artifacts deserve a place in our imaginary spaceflight museum. Most things sent to space are utilitarian in nature and are now of little practical value, unless they’re still functioning. Our artifacts can be found orbiting…

Astronomers have now discovered two exoplanets that are unlike any…

Buckminster Fuller stands in front of the geodesic dome building at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959.Photo: Hulton Archive (Getty Images)Buckminster Fuller, one of the most eccentric designers and futurist thinkers of the 20th century, helped define what “the future” meant for a generation of people trying to find their place in the world. And perhaps none of Fuller’s countless ideas have captured the spirit of that struggle better than the inventor’s geodesic dome.Today we have an excerpt from Inventor…

TESS has been discovering alien worlds outside of our solar system.Illustration: NASAIn the midst of surveying thousands of stars to spot exoplanets, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) entered into safe mode on Monday. It’s not yet clear what happened to the spacecraft, but engineers are trying to resuscitate the planet hunter. What’s Your First Fandom? | New York Comic Con 2022The spacecraft is stable, but early investigations suggests it suffered from a computer glitch, NASA announced on Wednesday. The…

NASA scientists have found evidence for a new transiting circumbinary planet. The term refers to any planet which orbits around two different stars. The evidence was received using an unprecedented technique. Researchers used NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to discover this unique planet. With the use of TESS and its predecessor Kepler space telescope scientists have discovered 14 such planetary bodies till now. Before this discovery, such planets existed only in the speculative and hypothetical…

Machine learning (ML) methods are not only supplementing the already available technology but are also taking scientific research further ahead. Now, a new deep learning method has added a whopping 301 exoplanets to the total tally. These planets were added to the already validated 4,569 planets which are orbiting several distant stars. The additions were made with the help of a deep neural method called ExoMiner, which works for NASA's supercomputer Pleiades to detect new planets. Once fed with enough data, ExoMiner…

Just a day after NASA scientists said that they have found 301 new exoplanets, astronomers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have stated that they identified 366 new exoplanets using data from the Kepler space telescope. The latest discovery was made possible by an algorithm developed by a UCLA postdoctoral scholar. The term “exoplanets” describes planets outside of our solar system. So far, astronomers have identified fewer than 5,000 exoplanets and thus the addition of hundreds of new ones in this…