Two planets discovered orbiting Kepler 9 plus unconfirmed Earth-like signs
An artist’s illustration of Kepler 9 and its orbiting planets
Scientists announced Thursday, August 26, the discovery of at least two planets orbiting Kepler 9 and were named Kepler-9b and Kepler-9c. They also have identified a possibly third, with a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in 1.6 day-orbit. The earth-like unconfirmed signal still requires additional observations whether it is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.
Based on the observations in Hawaii’s W.M. Keck Observatory, Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9B lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9C has an orbit of about 38 days.
"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."
NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler’s ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.
Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.
For more information about the Kepler mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/kepler
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