2023-06-12 03:30:11
Five years have passed since the Kepler Space Telescope’s retirement, but the celestial body observed in its last mission was found in the data at that time. Kepler is a space telescope launched into outer space in 2009 with an important task of exploring new planets.
During its nearly 10-year orbit around the sun, it discovered more than 2,600 exoplanets, including those lurking in the Goldilocks zone that could have conditions suitable for nurturing life. The telescope ended its mission in October 2018 because it ran out of fuel. However, this data still contains mysteries in the universe, and the astronomy team recently discovered that Kepler had discovered three celestial objects that he had been observing just before retiring. The paper was published in the Monthly Bulletin of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Three celestial bodies are observed in the last mission, K2 Campaign 19. As its tenure in space neared its end, Kepler became increasingly unstable, and the more clean data it acquired among its observational targets, the more difficult it was to maintain its attitude for long periods of time.
In K2 Campaign 19, it was said that high-quality data could only be acquired for about a week, and the rest of the data contained considerable noise. However, Kepler seems to have been worthwhile for the narrow pace.
The team enlisted the help of a group of citizen scientists (Visual Survey Group) who investigated light curves for stars observed on the same mission. A dimming found in the light curve suggests an exoplanet. Other missions to search for exoplanets, such as TESS, are also discovering using the same technique.
This discovery method is called the transit method and is one of the methods for indirectly observing exoplanets. From the Kepler data, the research team found three stars with small dimming that indicated that the orbiting celestial body had passed, and identified two of the celestial bodies as exoplanets and the third as extraterrestrial planet candidates.
Reportedly, the identified planets are thought to be hot mini-Neptunes because they are all several times the size of Earth and orbit close to their primary stars. Both are stated to be about 400 light-years from Earth. The exoplanet candidate is nearly four times larger than Earth and is 1200 light-years away from Earth.
The team says this is the last planet Kepler observed in chronological order, but all of the telescope data is useful. As the James Webb Space Telescope takes over the Kepler mission and explores near and far exoplanets, astronomers deepen their knowledge of the diversity and breadth of celestial bodies outside the solar system. Related information this placecan be found in
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