Kepler finds new ExoPlanets.

[Data Holmes]

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2010/10-01AR.html

NASA's Kepler space telescope, designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars, has discovered its first five new exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system.

Kepler's high sensitivity to both small and large planets enabled the discovery of the exoplanets, named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b. The discoveries were announced Monday, Jan. 4, by the members of the Kepler science team during a news briefing at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington.

 

[Christopher]

They're all hot Jovians, though, the easiest kind of exoplanets to detect. This is just the warmup. The signals of smaller exoplanets further from their stars -- including terrestrial worlds in habitable zones -- will take longer to tease out of the data and verify.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take at least three years to locate and verify an Earth-size planet.

So we'll have to be patient. Although around cooler stars, the habitable zone could be much closer and the orbital period much shorter. For instance, a habitable planet around, say, Epsilon Indi, a K5 star, could complete three orbits in less than one Earth year. A planet in an M dwarf's habitable zone could complete three orbits in a matter of months.

 

[Lindley]

I'm guessing this technique is only effective for planets whose orbital planes are edge-on towards us, so we can "see" them pass in front of the star?

 

[Christopher]

This particular technique, yeah.