NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was launched into space in March 2009. Over the years, the telescope has observed hundreds of thousands of stars and identified thousands of exoplanets (planets outside the solar system).

Now astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Wisconsin in the US completed the mission in 2018. Discover the last planets Kepler saw. The findings were published today through the Royal Astronomical Society.

Of the three planets Kepler observed, two are 400 light-years away and the other 1,200 light-years away.

An image from the planets / NASA

Kepler continued to record the brightness of stars in his final days. on October 30, 2018 Jesus ran out of fuel and officially completed his mission. Researchers led by Professor Andrew Vanderburg and Elyse Incha also of the past week analyzed the data obtained and achieved three stars.

After that, two of the stars were determined to host a planet. It was reported that the third star may have a candidate exoplanet that has not yet been confirmed. NASA also said in a statement that the dimensions of this trio Earth and Neptune lies between and close to the stars added that they were.

The smallest of the confirmed planets, the researchers found. K2-416bof the world 2.6 times as large He states that it orbits its star, a red dwarf, about once every 13 days. The second is the size of the Earth. slightly greater than three times and completes its orbit around its star every 6.5 days. K2-417b. 400 light years Both planets that are far from us are described as “hot mini-Neptunes” due to their size and proximity to their stars.

Kepler Space Telescope

The still unconfirmed planet observed by Kepler EPIC 246251988b is called. He’s almost the world four times as large It is the largest of the three. The candidate planet, which is similar in size to Neptune, is 1,200 light-years away and orbits its star in 10 days.

Kepler Space Telescope, which remained in service for 9.5 years during this time more than 2600 He had discovered the exoplanet. The identification of more than 5,000 exoplanets to date is also an indication of how useful the vehicle is in planetary exploration. One of the researchers, Elyse Incha, added that data from Kepler could lead to many more discoveries.