Nasa’s Kepler space telescope has discovered five new exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system.
The Kepler telescope has been designed to find earth-sized planets beyond the solar system and it continuously and simultaneously observes more than 150,000 stars.
The space telescope is equipped with a single purpose instrument, the photometer and has a 0.95m aperture and a 105° field of view.
It is pointed at, and records data from, a single group of stars for the at least 3.5-year duration of the mission.
The exoplanets named Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b are known also as hot Jupiters due to their high mass and extreme temperature that orbit stars hotter and larger than Earth’s sun.
The new planets discovered, have orbits ranging from 3.3 to 4.9 days and estimated temperatures range from 2,200°F to 3,000°F.
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By GlobalDataThe Kepler spacecraft was launched in March 2009 and has been collecting data since May 2009 and is expected to operate until, at least, November 2012.
