CLOSE NASA's Kepler spacecraft discovered more than 4,000 potential new planets outside our solar system, some of which are in the "habitable" zone of their star. USA TODAY

This artists’s conception gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. The planets, their orbits and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations. (Photo: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

The universe just got a little more crowded.

Nearly 100 new exoplanets — planets outside of our solar system — have been discovered, scientists announced in a new study published Thursday.

Using powerful telescopes, exoplanets can be detected as they orbit around their star, which causes a subtle dimming of starlight.

These most recent exoplanets were spotted using NASA's Kepler space telescope, now in orbit around the Earth. Though the spacecraft had a major mechanical failure in 2013, scientists were able to reconfigure it to enable it to keep watching for exoplanets.

“We started out analyzing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets," said study lead author Andrew Mayo, a PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark. "In turn, 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries.”

More: Distant Earth-like planets could harbor water — and maybe life

Since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995, about 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

But this is only the tip of a very big iceberg: Astronomers say there are likely hundreds of billions of exoplanets in our galaxy alone.

“Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science," Mayo said. "As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context.”

The research was published Thursday in the Astronomical Journal.

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2ocj7t0</s>There are 95 additions to the ever-growing list of exoplanets, as researchers analyzing data collected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope discovered them scattered around our home galaxy, the Milky Way. About 3,600 exoplanets are known to exist outside our solar system now, most of them thanks to Kepler. Some planets have also been discovered recently outside the Milky Way.

An international team of researchers made the discovery while analyzing 275 potential exoplanet candidates that showed up in the Kepler data during the spacecraft’s second mission, called K2. In 2013, four years after its launch, there was a malfunction in Kepler that ended its first mission. But a repair was affected in 2014, and the second phase of its planet-hunting mission, which is still ongoing, was called K2.

Of the 275 candidates in the dataset — being compiled since the first K2 data release in 2014 — 149 were verified to be actual exoplanets, and of those, researchers found 54 had already been discovered earlier, leaving them with 95 previously unknown exoplanets.

“We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. But we also detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger,” Andrew Mayo, a Ph.D. student of the National Space Institute (DTU Space) at the Technical University of Denmark, who was lead author of the paper announcing the discovery, said in a statement Thursday.

Kepler finds exoplanets by looking for dips in the light from a star as a planet passes across its face during its orbit. But since the dips in light can have other causes too, all such candidates identified by Kepler need to be tested using other means to validate whether they are in fact exoplanets or something else. One of the new 95 discoveries was somewhat special.

“We validated a planet on a 10 day orbit around a star called HD 212657, which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet. Planets around bright stars are important because astronomers can learn a lot about them from ground-based observatories,” Mayo said.

Exoplanets were once thought to be rare, but it is general scientific consensus now that planets exist in the trillions all over the universe. Recently, the first discovery of planets outside the Milky Way was made in a galaxy about 3.8 billion light-years away.

Just like the planets in the solar system range in size from the tiny Mercury (18 of it could fit inside Earth) to the gigantic Jupiter (about 1,300 Earths could fit inside it), exoplanets come in a variety of sizes and masses too — some smaller than the moon and others a few times larger than Jupiter.

While thousands of exoplanets are already known, and there are thousands of other candidates, we still know precious little about what those worlds are like. The upcoming launches of missions like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite should further our understanding.

The research will be published in the Astronomical Journal, and is currently available on the DTU Space website.</s>“We started out analyzing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries,” said American PhD student Andrew Mayo at the National Space Institute (DTU Space) at the Technical University of Denmark.

“This research has been underway since the first K2 data release in 2014.”

Mayo is the main author of the work being presented in the Astronomical Journal.

The research has been conducted partly as a senior project during his undergraduate studies at Harvard College. It has also involved a team of international colleagues from institutions such as NASA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Tokyo.

The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for exoplanets in a single patch of sky, but in 2013 a mechanical failure crippled the telescope. However, astronomers and engineers devised a way to repurpose and save the space telescope by changing its field of view periodically. This solution paved the way for the follow up K2 mission, which is still ongoing as the spacecraft searches for exoplanet transits.

These transits can be found by registering dips in light caused by the shadow of an exoplanet as it crosses in front of its host star. These dips are indications of exoplanets which must then be examined much closer in order to validate the candidates that are actually exoplanets.

The field of exoplanets is relatively young. The first planet orbiting a star similar to our own Sun was detected only in 1995. Today some 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

It’s difficult work to distinguish which signals are actually coming from exoplanets. Mayo and his colleagues analyzed hundreds of signals of potential exoplanets thoroughly to determine which signals were created by exoplanets and which were caused by other sources.

“We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. But we also detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger,” said Mayo.

One of the planets detected was orbiting a very bright star.

“We validated a planet on a 10 day orbit around a star called HD 212657, which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet. Planets around bright stars are important because astronomers can learn a lot about them from ground-based observatories,” said Mayo.

“Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science. As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context”.

The Kepler space telescope has made huge contributions to the field of exoplanets both in its original mission and its successor K2 mission. So far these missions have provided over 5,100 exoplanet candidates that can now be examined more closely.

With new, upcoming space missions like the James Webb Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, astronomers will take exciting new steps toward characterizing and studying exoplanets like the rocky, habitable, Earth-sized planets that might be capable of supporting life.

PDF Copy of the Paper: 275 CANDIDATES AND 149 VALIDATED PLANETS ORBITING BRIGHT STARS IN K2 CAMPAIGNS 0-10</s>An international team of scientists have confirmed the discovery of almost 100 new planets beyond our solar system which are orbiting nearby stars. They were found using data captured by Nasa's Kepler space observatory as part of its K2 mission.

Researchers have been examining data from the mission - which has so far identified nearly 300 new exoplanets - since 2014. But the latest batch - described in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal - is the most impressive of the K2 mission so far.

"This is more than twice as large as any other single haul of exoplanets found as part of the K2 mission," Andrew Mayo from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, told IBTimes UK. "The previous largest batch added 45 new exoplanets to the K2 sample."

Astronomers can identify exoplanets using Kepler because it is able to register dips in light when objects pass in front of their host star. However, researchers must examine these dimming events closely to confirm that they are being caused by transiting exoplanets.

During the latest research, the team found that some of the signals coming from the 275 candidate exoplanets they were investigating were actually being caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. However, they were eventually able to confirm the discovery of 95 new exoplanets, ranging in size from smaller than Earth to bigger than Jupiter, and even larger.

The scientists from institutions including Nasa, Caltech, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Tokyo, were able to determine the radius of each planet, its distance from its host star and its orbital period, as well as other parameters.

The original Kepler mission began in 2009 when the space observatory was launched into orbit around the Earth to hunt for new exoplanets in a particular patch of the sky. But in 2013, a mechanical failure crippled the telescope. Fortunately, astronomers and engineers managed to save it by reconfiguring the observatory so that it changed its field of view periodically. This marked the start of the K2 mission.

"The most interesting thing about this new release of planets is that they orbit stars that are quite bright relative to the original Kepler mission, so many will be excellent targets for follow-up observations such as mass measurements and atmospheric characterisation," Mayo said. "In comparison very few targets from the original Kepler mission were suitable for those types of analyses".

Finding planets around bright stars is good news for astronomers because they can learn a lot about them using ground-based observatories. One world of particular interest among the latest batch was found to orbit the brightest star to host a planet ever found using Kepler.

The search for new exoplanets is currently one of the most exciting areas of space science, one that is providing fascinating insights into our universe. We now know that planets around other stars are the rule rather than the exception and that there are likely billions in the Milky Way alone.

The field is relatively young – the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992 – but it is rapidly maturing. To date, more than 3,700 exoplanets have been confirmed, with more than 2,500 of those identified by the two Kepler missions.

"The original Kepler mission was our first glimpse into the incredible abundance and diversity of exoplanets in the Galaxy," Mayo said. "It taught us volumes about the types of exoplanets and exoplanet systems that can exist in nature and gave us an idea of what the general exoplanet population looks like."

"The follow up K2 mission, on the other hand, has provided us with a great deal of interesting individual planets and systems that we can now start to study in greater detail. While Kepler gave us a broad overview of exoplanets, K2 is helping us dive much deeper," he added.

Using the new data, scientists can start looking closer at the density, composition and even atmospheres of the exoplanets.

And with upcoming missions, such as the powerful James Webb Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, astronomers will be able to make unprecedented observations of these planets and identify which may be capable of supporting life, among other goals.</s>Nearly 100 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system have been found by Nasa's Kepler telescope.

Researchers confirmed the presence of the 95 worlds after studying 275 possible candidates from data provided by the probe.

Kepler, which is currently on the K2 mission to discover exoplanets, has found thousands of candidates since it was launched almost a decade ago.

The latest discovery raises hopes that astronomers may soon find a system similar to our own that hosts alien life.

The study was done by an international team led by Andrew Mayo from the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark.

'By increasing the number of planets discovered with K2 by almost 50 percent, this work will help astronomers dive much deeper into analysing and learning about individual planets, particularly smaller exoplanets,' Dr Mayo told Gizmodo.

The Kepler spacecraft was launched in 2009 to hunt for exoplanets in a single patch of sky, but in 2013 a mechanical failure crippled the telescope.

However, astronomers and engineers devised a way to repurpose and save the space telescope by changing its field of view periodically. This solution paved the way for the follow up K2 mission, which is still ongoing as the spacecraft searches for exoplanet transits.

These transits can be found by registering dips in light caused by the shadow of an exoplanet as it crosses in front of its host star.

These dips are indications of exoplanets which must then be examined much closer in order to validate the candidates that are actually exoplanets.

The field of exoplanets is relatively young.

The first planet orbiting a star similar to our own sun was detected only in 1995.

Today some 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

It's difficult work to distinguish which signals are actually coming from exoplanets.

Dr Mayo and his colleagues analysed hundreds of signals of potential exoplanets thoroughly to determine which signals were created by exoplanets and which were caused by other sources.

'We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. But we also detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger,' said Dr Mayo.

One of the planets detected was orbiting a very bright star.

'We validated a planet on a 10 day orbit around a star called HD 212657, which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet.

'Planets around bright stars are important because astronomers can learn a lot about them from ground-based observatories,' said Dr Mayo.

'Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science. As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context'.

The latest study follows news in December that the Kepler probe had found an eighth planet in a distant star system called Kepler 90.

This was the first time a faraway star had been found to have the same number of planets orbiting it as our own sun.

According to NASA, it confirmed for the first time that distant star systems can be home to 'families as large as our own.'

The new planet, estimated to be about 30 percent larger than Earth, is 'not a place you'd like to visit,' said Andrew Vanderburg, astronomer and NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas, Austin.

'It is probably rocky, and doesn't have a thick atmosphere'. And, temperatures at the surface are 'scorching.'

According to Vanderburg, the average surface temperature is likely around 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Kepler planet hunting satellite has been searching the stars for distant worlds using Google's AI system, which used machine learning to 'find' planets in the Kepler data with up to 96 percent accuracy.

Neural networks can be trained on huge amounts of data to determine the difference between objects with great accuracy, the team explained in the teleconference.

Much like an AI can learn to spot the difference between cats and dogs, it can spot the difference between patterns associated with planets, and other types of patterns in the cosmos that could be false positives.

The star system sits roughly 2,545 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco, and of the new planets found, Kepler 90i is the 'smallest of the bunch.'

The new planet orbits its star once every 14.4 days.

But, all of the planets in this system 'tightly' orbit their star, which is thought to be cooler than our own sun, meaning their orbital periods are relatively short.

Before the latest AI-guided results, 'Kepler 90 was tied with Trappist-1, with 7 planets each,' says Jessie Dotson, Kepler project scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

'But now, it ties with our own system with the most known number of planets' around a star.</s>The universe just got a little more crowded.

Nearly 100 new exoplanets – planets outside our solar system – have been discovered, scientists announced in a new study published on Thursday.

Using powerful telescopes, exoplanets can be detected as they orbit around their star, which causes a subtle dimming of starlight.

These most recent exoplanets were spotted using Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, now in orbit around the Earth. Though the spacecraft had a major mechanical failure in 2013, scientists were able to reconfigure it to enable it to keep watching for exoplanets.

“We started out analysing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets,” said study lead author Andrew Mayo, a PhD student at the Technical University of Denmark. “In turn, 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries.”

Scientists discover the first planets outside the Milky Way – and there may be trillions

Since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1995, about 3,600 exoplanets have been found, ranging from rocky Earth-sized planets to large gas giants like Jupiter.

But this is only the tip of a very big iceberg. Astronomers say there are likely hundreds of billions of exoplanets in our galaxy alone.

“Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science,” Mayo said. “As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context.”

Google’s computers help Nasa find two new planets around distant stars

The research was published on Thursday in the Astronomical Journal.</s>As part of the K2 mission – the NASA Kepler telescope’s new lease on life

The number of exoplanets has risen by almost 100, as an international team of astronomers confirms a new batch found in data captured as part of the K2 mission – the NASA Kepler telescope’s new lease on life.

They have been analysing the first batch of K2 data, and have just announced the discovery of another 95 planets – bringing the total number of exoplanets discovered by K2 to nearly 300.

“We started out analysing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries,” said PhD student Andrew Mayo from the Technical University of Denmark, and lead author on the project.

The Kepler mission was launched in 2009. Since then, it has trailed Earth’s orbit around the Sun, searching for exoplanets using the transit method – photographing stars over time, and looking for changes in the brightness.

If a star dims, then brightens again on a regular basis, that more than likely means it’s being orbited by a body large enough to block at least some of its light.

The method requires a lot of painstaking work poring over data to find the periods of dimness, and then confirm them. It also only works if the planet orbits between the observer (us, or rather the Kepler telescope) and its star.

Nevertheless, it’s very effective. The Kepler main mission found 2,341 confirmed exoplanets, according to NASA.

But then disaster struck in 2013, when the second of the telescope’s four reaction wheels failed. The mission was revived as K2 when NASA figured out a way to use Kepler’s thrusters as a makeshift reaction wheel, therefore retaining the ability to reorient the telescope to look at different parts of the sky.

Thankfully, it’s still at work to this day.

The data used for Mayo’s team’s analysis was collected in 2014. They had to comb the data thoroughly to make sure the stars’ dimming was not caused by other factors.

“We found that some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft. But we also detected planets that range from sub-Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger,” Mayo said.

“We validated a planet on a 10 day orbit around a star called HD 212657 [about 254 light-years away], which is now the brightest star found by either the Kepler or K2 missions to host a validated planet.”

The brighter the host star, the more we can determine about the planet that orbits it – perhaps even more so when the next generation of much higher resolution space telescopes is launched.

Astronomers may be able to even glean information about its atmosphere, as they have done for TRAPPIST-1 planets.

Between them, the Kepler and K2 missions have been used to find over 5,100 candidate exoplanets to date.

This is partially about the search for extraterrestrial life, but also because statistical data about the universe around us – such as how many planets there are, the average number of planets per system, and the number of rocky and gaseous planets – can tell us more about how typical (or not) our own Solar System is, and how it fits into our Universe.</s>Scientists have discovered nearly 100 new 'exoplanets' in the search for Earth-like planets that could support life.

It's a major breakthrough that reveals new planets that range in size from smaller than Earth to celestial bodies even bigger than Jupiter.

The findings were made by a team of international colleagues from the University of Denmark, NASA, the University of Tokyo and others.

Researchers studied information from the K2 Kepler telescope mission, which aims to track down new exoplanets across the universe.

Exoplanets are planets found outside of our solar system, the Milky Way, that orbit a star – just like how Earth orbits the Sun.

To find these, scientists use a space telescope to track dips in light caused by the shadow of an exoplanet crossing in front of its host star.

Lead author Andrew Mayo, who works at the National Space Insititute, has presented the findings in the Astronomical Journal, and revealed that he had been working on the project since the first K2 data release back in 2014.

"We started out analysing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets.

"In turn 95 of these planets have been proved to be new discoveries."

The original Kepler spacecraft launched back in 2009, questing for exoplanets in a small patch of sky.

But a mechanical failure crippled the telescope in 2013, paving the way for a follow-up K2 mission that's proving much more successful.

It allowed researchers to uncover a new field of exoplanets, raising hopes for the prospect of life beyond earth.

The goal is to eventually track down exoplanets that are rocky, habitable, Earth-sized planets that could be capable of supporting life.

"Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science. As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets, which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context."

Mayo says they "detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger".

This story originally appeared in The Sun.</s>NASA’s Kepler space telescope was launched for the purpose of finding new objects, like planets, far off in space, and it has done its job so incredibly well astronomers now have more new planets than they know what to do with. Researchers just announced latest batch of worlds that Kepler has detected, numbering a whopping 95, and pushing the space telescope’s total tally to over 2,400 new planets.

The Kepler telescope is currently in an extended mission phase after already completing its primary mission and discovering thousands of new worlds. This new effort, called “K2,” has already resulted in the discovery of nearly 300 new planets, proving that the telescope still has plenty of power to comb the heavens for undetected exoplanets.

In order to spot these new worlds, scientists began sifting through an immense amount of data that Kepler has sent back. Dating back to 2014, the wealth of observations produced a total of 275 “candidate” signals which may or may not have been planets. After sifting through the numbers one-by-one, 149 of the signals were shown to be exoplanets, and 95 of those are entirely new to science.

“Exoplanets are a very exciting field of space science,” Andrew Mayo of the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark said in a press release. “As more planets are discovered, astronomers will develop a much better picture of the nature of exoplanets which in turn will allow us to place our own solar system into a galactic context.”

The new planets range in size from smaller than Earth to larger than even the mighty Jupiter, and one of the planets was particularly special. The never-bef0re-seen world is orbiting the brightest start ever discovered by the Kepler telescope. That’s particularly important because planets orbiting bright stars are often easier to study, and can yield additional information with subsequent observations.

Because of the distance of the planets from Earth — often hundreds of light years or more — it’s difficult for researchers to determine their potential for hosting life. As telescope technology pushes forward, additional information about the planets may be revealed, but for now we simply know that they exist.</s>An international team of scientists have, over a period of four years, discovered 95 new exoplanets. The discoveries will allow scientists to better understand how solar systems are created, including our own.

While the scientists have been analyzing data from 2014, the story of these 95 new planets discovered outside of the solar system begins in 2009, when NASA's Kepler spacecraft was launched with the specific goal of finding exoplanets. It's found over 100,000 stars and 2,300 planets in the process.

However, a technical failure knocked the Kepler out of commission in 2013. The next year NASA sent up a replacement spacecraft known as K2. A product of worldwide collaboration, scientists from Harvard, NASA, Caltech, UC Berkeley, the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, and the University of Tokyo have been studying its findings. They've published their paper here.

K2 searches for exoplanets by looking for planetary transits. When a planet is rotating around its star and comes between that star and the Earth, it creates a dip in light. Scientists monitor these dips and determine if they are caused by a planet's rotation.

There are many false positives. "We started out analyzing 275 candidates of which 149 were validated as real exoplanets. In turn 95 of these planets have proved to be new discoveries," says PhD student Andrew Mayo at the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, in a press statement.

According to Mayo, "some of the signals were caused by multiple star systems or noise from the spacecraft." But the noise didn't keep the team from missing the signal. "We also detected planets that range from sub Earth-sized to the size of Jupiter and larger," he says.

Although exoplanetry is a relatively new field with the first one only discovered in 1995, it has made up for lost time with at times what feels like a deluge of planets. Some of the most famous, like those in the TRAPPIST-1 system, often tantalizing possibilities of life-friendly conditions. Some scientists have taken to creating periodic tables just to keep track of all of them.

Together, Kepler and K2 represent one of the first steps in exoplanetry. NASA is hoping that the upcoming James Webb Telescope and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), made specifically for this purpose, will help to show just how crowded outer space truly is.
NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered 95 new exoplanets.