Wow. 715 new planets have been discovered, orbiting around 305 stars! NASA announced today that its space telescope Kepler, which was launched in 2009, used a statistical technique to verify that these were planets and not stars, which is important since the telescope has been observing 150,000 stars. Four of the planets are even close to Earth in size and are located at the right distance from their star to be habitable if they contained liquid water.
It's crazy that about 20 years ago, we did not know of any planets outside our solar system, and now we have discovered almost 1,700 outside our solar system!
http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-mission-announces-a-planet-bonanza
It's crazy that about 20 years ago, we did not know of any planets outside our solar system, and now we have discovered almost 1,700 outside our solar system!
http://www.nasa.gov/ames/kepler/nasas-kepler-mission-announces-a-planet-bonanza