Discovered new exoplanets in habitable zone

Planet KIC-7340288 b has the right conditions for life to exist, among the 17 newly discovered exoplanets.

The size of 17 planets compared to Mars, Earth, and Neptune.(Photo: CNN).

Michelle Kunimoto , PhD student at the University of British Columbia, Canada, discovered 17 planets when looking at data from the Kepler project ending 2018 of the US Space Agency (NASA). Earlier, in 2016, when he was a student of astronomy, Kunimoto found 4 exoplanets.

One of the newly discovered planets is in the habitable zone around the host star. This distance helps the planet have the right temperature and conditions for liquid water to exist on the surface. Kunimoto is particularly interested in extraterrestrial life. The female student announced her findings on February 27 in the Astronomical Journal.

"This planet is about 1,000 light-years from Earth so we won't be able to get there anytime soon," Kunimoto said. "But this is a really interesting discovery, because only 15 small planets have been confirmed in the habitable zone that researchers found via the Kepler spacecraft data."

Michelle Kunimoto.(Photo: CNN).

Exoplanet KIC-7340288 b is about 1.5 times the size of Earth, possibly a rocky planet. A year on the planet is 142.5 days on Earth and its orbit is slightly larger than Mercury's orbit around the Sun. The amount of light KIC-7340288 b received from the host star is about one-third that of the light from the Sun to Earth. Kunimoto discovered KIC-7340288 b and 16 other planets by teleportation when looking at data from Kepler.

"Every time a planet passes in front of its host star, it partially obscures the star's light and temporarily lowers the brightness. By looking for a reduction in light, or teleportation, you can stringing information about the planet such as size and time orbiting, " Kunimoto explained. Most of the planet Kunimoto found is much bigger than Earth, while the smallest is only two-thirds.

Kunimoto is conducting a follow-up study with Henry Ngo, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, using the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii with a near-infrared imaging device and spectrometer to calculate survival rates. exoplanets in the habitable zone.