Exoplanet candidates found in record time
Time taken to identify dozens of new planetary candidates has been slashed
Almost 80 new exoplanets have been discovered by scientists analysing data from the follow-up mission to NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. The planetary candidates were discovered by K2 researchers in just two weeks, making it a record-breaking feat.
The scientists looked at graphs of light intensity, known as lightcurves, from each of the 50,000 stars they analysed. They found that 30 of the candidates were of the highest quality, while 48 could potentially be false positives. There were also
164 eclipsing binaries and 231 other regularly periodic variable sources.
One of the exoplanets appears to orbit the bright star HD 73344 every 15 days and, as well as being scorchingly hot with temperatures reaching 1,300 degrees Celsius (2,372 degrees Fahrenheit), the body could be about 2.5-times the size of Earth and ten-times as massive.
“We think it would probably be more like a smaller, hotter version of Uranus or Neptune,” says Ian Crossfield, an assistant professor of physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who co-led the study with graduate student Liang Yu.
The speed of the discoveries from K2's 16th and 17th observing campaigns was made possible thanks to tools developed at MIT. It is being seen as crucial in enabling astronomers to monitor patches of sky before a planetary candidate passes out of sight.