People all over our planet Earth have got some curiosity to know about the life that exists outside our planet. The latest news is that NASA, the US based spaced agency, had discovered ”another earth” orbiting a star. For NASA which is involved in finding the presence of life outside earth, this discovery was a step in the right direction.
The name given to this new planet was Kepler 452b. This planet was detected by Keplers Space Telescope belonging to NASA. This process of discovering new planets started in the year 2009. According to statement from NASA, this Kepler 452b was orbiting a close cousin of sun and was 1.5 billion years older. Its star was 4% more bigger than the Sun and also 10 % brighter .
It was also said that, Kepler 452b was considered to be the first Earth like planet discovered orbiting a star inside that body’s habitable zone. ”Goldilocks zone”, was the name given to the region, where the conditions existed was neither too hot nor too cold. This Kepler 452b would bring astronomers closer as they were in search of finding life outside earth. Being 60% more in diameter than planet Earth, it was referred as ” Super-Earth-sized planet. The newly found planet mass and composition were not determined.
The concept of exoplanets existed only in theory some 20 years back. These days the astronomers knew about 1030 alien worlds, orbiting hundreds of sun. According to NASA, after many discoveries all these years, the astronomers were now at the end of finding and would make the people happy in discovering another” Earth”. It was also confirmed by the astronomers that this Kepler 452b existed in the habitable zone of its star for 6 billion years. This new planet was at a distance of 1400 light years from Earth.
According to Jeff Coughlin, Kepler research scientist at the SETI institute in Mountain View, California, progress in the discovery of planet like Earth, similar in size and temperature around Sun like star, was amazing and great . Kepler 452b was expected to be rocky and Earth-like because of its size.
Many ground based observatories were used by the research members to confirm data got during original Kepler Mission. NASA also released the latest exoplanets catalogue that had more than 500 new planets to already present 4175 exoplanets discovered by the telescope. Dips in the brightness of the stars were considered by Kepler in identifying them as planets. Amount of $ 600 million was spent by NASA for this Kepler Mission . In the year 2017, NASA had planned to start planet hunting satellite named TESS, that would provide more informations regarding the size, mass of the planets circling distant stars.
