Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: leamangaarandia on 12/05/2016 05:46:14
-
2 years ago i heard on the news about new planrt named KEPLER 21..is there any news about it now?
-
As far as we know, Kepler 21b is still out there...
The list of planets found by the Kepler spacecraft are tabulated here (there are over 1000 of them, now):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_exoplanets_discovered_using_the_Kepler_spacecraft
Unfortunately, the hyperlink to Kepler 21b does not have a page of its own, and just redirects to the Kepler spacecraft page.
The Kepler spacecraft detects these planets by the dimming of their parent star as the planet passes between the star and Earth. The interval between these transits tells us about the orbit, and the amount of dimming tells us something about the size of the planet. Spectroscopic observation of the parent star gives us an idea of the mass of the planet. This type of information is contained in the table.
There is hope that follow-up observations may be able to determine the atmospheric composition. Maybe one day, we may be able to take an image of the planet itself; but for now, we don't even have a silhouette.