As astronomers delve deeper into the diversity of worlds orbiting distant stars, a new study suggests comparing populations ...

"There really is something very different about how these giant planets form versus how small planets like Earth form." ...

The Kepler mission was conceived as a Discovery Program mission at the turn of the century and was approved as the tenth mission in the program in December 2001. At that time only 80 exoplanets ...

Using a 3D global climate computer model normally employed to study Earth's environment, the astronomers found that the white dwarf exoplanet was much warmer than the Kepler-62 exoplanet despite ...

It found plenty, but some discoveries were easier to verify than others, and the very first exoplanet ever detected by Kepler has only just been confirmed. When scientists first notice evidence of ...

Since its launch in 2009, NASA's Kepler mission has used the transit method to confirm more than 60 new exoplanets and to identify 2,300 candidate planets now awaiting confirmation via further ...

Kepler was one of the most successful exoplanet-hunting missions so far. It discovered 2,600 confirmed exoplanets—almost half of the total—in its almost 10 years of operation. However ...

And Kepler-16 b, located roughly 250 light-years away, is the real deal. Discovered in 2011, this exoplanet defies the traditional solitary planetary orbit by circling two stars — much like the ...

NASA’s Kepler space telescope was launched for the ... still has plenty of power to comb the heavens for undetected exoplanets. In order to spot these new worlds, scientists began sifting ...

Most of those observations were made by the exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope, which for four consecutive years kept an eye on a small patch of sky containing a few hundred thousand stars.

A selection of exoplanets that orbit in the habitable zone around their stars — where water can sit in liquid form on the surface. From left: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-452b, Kepler-62f ...

Using this technique, and by gathering the light curves from these stars, Kepler uncovered thousands of exoplanets. The UCLA team turned to 1,600 of these light curves to extract information about ...