NASA's Kepler Announces 11 New Planetary Systems

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
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Whitney Clavin 818-354-4673
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Whitney.Clavin@jpl.nasa.gov

News release: 2012-026 Jan. 26, 2012

NASA's Kepler Announces 11 New Planetary Systems

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-026&cid=release_2012-026

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed
planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple
the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of,
the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

The planets orbit close to their host stars and range in size from 1.5 times the radius of
Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further
observations will be required to determine which are rocky like Earth and which have thick
gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143
days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky,"
said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Now,
in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has
discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that
our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

Kepler identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of
more than 150,000 stars to detect when a planet passes in front of the star. That passage
casts a small shadow toward Earth and the Kepler spacecraft.

"Confirming that the small decrease in the star's brightness is due to a planet requires
additional observations and time-consuming analysis," said Eric Ford, associate professor
of astronomy at the University of Florida and lead author of the paper confirming Kepler-23
and Kepler-24. "We verified these planets using new techniques that dramatically
accelerated their discovery."

Each of the newly confirmed planetary systems contains two to five closely spaced
transiting planets. In tightly packed planetary systems, the gravitational pull of the planets
on each other causes some planets to accelerate and some to decelerate along their
orbits. The acceleration causes the orbital period of each planet to change. Kepler detects
this effect by measuring the changes, or so-called Transit Timing Variations.

Planetary systems with Transit Timing Variations can be verified without requiring
extensive ground-based observations, accelerating confirmation of planet candidates. This
detection technique also increases Kepler's ability to confirm planetary systems around
fainter and more distant stars.

"By precisely timing when each planet transits its star, Kepler detected the gravitational tug
of the planets on each other, clinching the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary
systems," said Dan Fabrycky, Hubble Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
and lead author for a paper confirming Kepler-29, 30, 31 and 32.

Five of the systems (Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33) contain a
pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer
planet. Four of the systems (Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-28 and Kepler-32) contain a
pairing where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet
orbits its star.

"These configurations help to amplify the gravitational interactions between the planets,
similar to how my sons kick their legs on a swing at the right time to go higher," said Jason
Steffen, the Brinson postdoctoral fellow at Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics in
Batavia, Ill., and lead author of a paper confirming Kepler-25, 26, 27 and 28.

Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than our sun, had the most planets. The
system hosts five planets, ranging in size from 1.5 to 5 times that of Earth. All of the planets
are located closer to their star than any planet is to our sun.

The properties of a star provide clues for planet detection. The decrease in the star's
brightness and duration of a planet transit combined with the properties of its host star
present a recognizable signature. When astronomers detect planet candidates that exhibit
similar signatures around the same star, the likelihood of any of these planet candidates
being a false positive is very low.

"The approach used to verify the Kepler-33 planets shows the overall reliability is quite
high," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett
Field, Calif., and lead author of the paper on Kepler-33. "This is a validation by multiplicity."

These discoveries are published in four different papers in the Astrophysical Journal and
the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system
development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., managed the Kepler mission's development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight
system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space
Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler
science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science
Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

For more information about the Kepler mission and to view the digital press kit, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/kepler . More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-
finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

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