Astronomy student discovers 17 exoplanets, including a potentially habitable one

Astromy Student Michelle Kunimoto of University of British Columbia (UBC) has discovered 17 new exoplanets, including a potentially habitable, Earth-sized world, by combing through data gared by NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler satellite looked for planets, especially those that lie in "habitable zones" of ir stars, where liquid water could exist on a rocky planet's surface over its original four-year mission.

Exoplanets refer to planets that orbit stars outside of our Solar System. 

new finding is published in Astromical Journal

new finding is published in Astromical Journal that includes one such particularly rare planet. Officially named KIC-7340288 b, planet discovered by Michelle Kunimoto is just one and a half times size of Earth, which is small eugh to be considered rocky, instead of gaseous like giant planets of Solar System and in habitable zone of its star. 

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planet is a thousand light-years away, says Kunimoto

"This planet is about a thousand light-years away, so we're t getting re anytime soon!" said Michelle Kunimoto, a PhD candidate in Department of Physics and Astromy. "But this is a really exciting find since re have only been 15 small, confirmed planets in habitable zone found in Kepler data so far," Michelle Kunimoto added.

planet has a year that is 142.5 days long, orbiting its star at 0.444 Astromical Units (AU, distance between Earth and our Sun) just bigger than Mercury's orbit in our Solar System, and gets about a third of light Earth gets from Sun. Of or 16 new planets discovered, smallest is only two-thirds size of Earth one of smallest planets to be found with Kepler so far. rest range in size up to eight times size of Earth.

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Used "Transit method" to look for planets

Michelle Kunimoto working on her Ph.D. at UBC used "transit method" to look for planets among roughly 200,000 stars observed by Kepler mission.

"Every time a planet passes in front of a star, it blocks a portion of that star's light and causes a temporary decrease in star's brightness," Michelle Kunimoto said. She furr stated, "By finding se dips, kwn as transits, you can start to piece toger information about planet, such as its size and how long it takes to orbit".

Michelle Kunimoto also collaborated with UBC alumnus Henry Ngo to obtain razor-sharp follow-up ims of some of her planet-hosting stars with Near InfraRed Imr and Spectrometer (NIRI) on Gemini rth 8-metre telescope in Hawaii.

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"I took ims of stars as if from , using adaptive optics," she said. "I was able to tell if re was a star nearby that could have affected Kepler's measurements, such as being cause of dip itself."

In addition to new planets, Michelle Kunimoto was able to observe thousands of kwn Kepler planets using transit method and will be re-analysing exoplanet census as a whole.

"We'll be estimating how many planets are expected for stars with different temperatures," said Michelle Kunimoto's PhD supervisor and UBC Professor Jaymie Matws.

"A particularly important result will be finding a terrestrial habitable zone planet occurrence rate. How many Earth-like planets are re? Stay tuned," Jaymie Matws added.

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(With inputs from ANI)