This animation is based on photometric observations made by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. By closely monitoring the star KSN 2011d, located 1.2 billion light-years away, Kepler caught the onset of the early flash and subsequent explosion.
From Lunar orbit, Earth is obviously habitable. But from a distant point in the galaxy, not so much.
Kepler has now discovered more than 100 confirmed alien planets during its second-chance K2 mission, researchers announced today (Jan. 5) here at the 227th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).
Astronomers have found a rocky planet orbiting a small star that is within easy telescope views from Earth.
If our Galaxy truly contains many intelligent civilizations, some of which may be ahead of us by a billion years, how is it possible that we have not seen any sign of them yet? Nobody knows the answer to this so-called "Fermi Paradox," but..
The NASA Kepler Mission is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist, and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. It now has another planet to add to its growing list. Researchers have shown that one of the brightest stars in the Kepler star field has a planet with a radius only 1.6 that of Earth
Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby.
