In what’s stated to become the 3rd amount of time in recorded history , two amateur British astronomers say they’ve discovered a brand new planet which they would like to be named after them .

Chris Holmes and Lee Threapleton spotted the ” new world ” while focusing on a task to locate planets beyond our photo voltaic system , promoted by John Cox in the Stargazing Live series , the Daily Mail reported . If their discovery is confirmed by planetary researchers , then your planet , regarded as gaseous and round the size Neptune , is going to be named ‘Threapleton Holmes B’ , the newspaper stated .

The happy couple made the invention after recognizing alterations in light designs within an image from Nasa’s Kepler space telescope . The unusual designs recommended a planet seems to become revolving about a sun known as SPH 10066540, which lies between 600 and three,000 many years away . The look from the new planet continues to be published online at Planethunters .org .

Holmes of Peterborough stated ,”I have never even used a telescope . I had a passing curiosity about where situations are on the horizon , but didn’t have more understanding about this. Being the main one to locate something is an extremely exciting position .”

Some 1,000 or more possible new planets have been discovered by NASA’s Kepler space observatory of late. All new planets discovered have marked a watershed in the quest of alien planets that are habitable.

NASA Finds Six-Planet Solar System

For the time, the newly identified 1,200 planetary objects remain as candidates that need further confirmation and follow-up. Kepler spacecraft’s recent discoveries are considered to be the greatest and have been validated through different means. This has been shared by Jack Lissauer, co-investigator of the Kepler mission at a teleconference amid reporters.  The uniqueness of the Kepler 11 system has been proved by various reasons: For beginners, it is one of the biggest and rarest collections of Earth-like bodies beyond the solar system. Kepler has found 6 planets that are aligned in a way so that they are transited across their host star. This transition happens from Kepler’s vantage point.

The Kepler mission has carried out a cosmic census which indicates the existence of numerous multi-planet systems that are stable and other small planets in our universe. The recent discoveries indicate the presence of many more exoplanets in the universe than what our astronomers have believed till late. Astronomers are known to have discovered some 500 such alien planets or more planetary bodies till date.

The Kepler spacecraft is an observatory based in space. It was launched in 2009, and is aimed at the research for planets which are termed as “extra-solar”. All of the planetary objects discovered by Kepler haven’t been confirmed as ‘planets’ yet, but according to some astronomers, most of these objects will be confirmed as planets as time proceeds.

According to the Kepler report, their findings show that there are plenty of planets which are smaller to Jupiter in size as compared to planets that are bigger than it. Scientists even have a few good reasons to believe that their hope of discovering earth-like planets is upheld by the findings of the Kepler mission. Even when the discovery of a planet as small as our Earth hasn’t been confirmed by the Kepler mission, there are considerable signs which support this idea. Jonathan Fortney, an astronomer with the California University based in Santa Cruz has also laid stress upon this fact.

HOW KEPLER SPOTS NEW PLANETS

The Kepler spacecraft looks for new planets that revolve around their host stars near or within a “habitable zone” that supports the formation of liquid water. In order to monitor the light of 156,000 stars belonging to a specific area within the Lyra and Cygnus constellations, a super-sensitive photo-meter is used by the Kepler spacecraft. According to the NASA officials, Kepler can even measure the dimming effect on a star’s light that is caused by transiting alien planets across their parent stars.

The Kepler spacecraft has helped the astronomers to discover the Kepler-10b which is regarded as the smallest of all aliens planets discovered till date. However, our scientists wouldn’t consider Kepler-10b to be within its parent’s habitable zone. In order to help us understand our actual place within the galaxy, Kepler is using various orbital distances and multiple sizes to detect our planetary candidates and planets. But scientists have confirmed that to achieve such a milestone more observations of all new planets discovered will be required with time.

10 new planets discovered by a global team involve scientists from Oxford University. One of these planets bears a rare atmosphere like Saturn, twin planets of the size of Neptune and one circling a star which is some tens of millions years of age.

CNES, a French space agency had used the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and Transits) telescope in order to detect these planets. This space telescope is used to identify exoplanets – planets that reside beyond our solar system. These new planets discovered actually got spotted as they transit in front of their stars. The second CoRoT Symposium was held on 14 June in Marseille where these new planets were announced. A seminar was also held at the London Institute of Physics on 15^th June wherein these planets were introduced.

The 10 new planets are:

CoRoT-16b: A giant planet which is puffed-up and developed of late. It’s worth the full radius of Jupiter and half it’s mass. It revolves round a Sun-like star which is matured and aged 6 billion years in about 5.3 days. A close-in and old planet like this one bears a highly elongated orbit which is quite rare.

CoRoT-17b: A giant planet that is two times the age of our Sun, and which revolves around a star that is 1o billion years old. The density of this planet is twice as that of Jupiter, bears 2.4 Jupiter masses and revolves round its star in about 3.7 days. The evolution process of giant planets for ages can be easily explained by studying an old planetary system like this one.

CoRoT-18b: This is a “Hot Jupiter” planet which revolves around a new star that is only 600 million years of age. It is quite different than the other CoRoT planets. The mass of this planet is worth 3.5 times of that of Jupiter, and its size is 1.4 times when compared with Jupiter. This is quite a dense planet, as its density is almost two times of that of Jupiter.

CoRoT-19b: The size of this planet 1.5 times to that of Jupiter and bears a similar mass. The density of this planet is even lower than that of Saturn which holds the lowest density in our solar system.

CoRoT-20b: This planet moves eccentrically to circle its star in 9.2 days, and is termed as a “hot Jupiter”. The density is extremely high and can be related with its elongated orbit. This feature makes CoRoT-20b some what special. This giant gaseous planet has a density that is two times that of Mars.

CoRoT-21b: A massive gas planet which is 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter and 1.3 times of it in size. Within all CoRoT stars it is amongst the faintest for which the mass of the planet could be determined. In order to measure the mass, scientists in Hawaii required the largest telescope in the world i.e. the Keck 10m telescope.

CoRoT-22b*: The size of this planet is worth 0.74 radii of that of a giant planet like Saturn. This exoplanet has a mass less than half as much as that of Saturn and hasn’t been properly determined yet.

CoRoT-23b: This planet resembles a hot Jupiter which circles its star in about 3.6 days.

CoRoT-24b and 24c*: A system comprising of two passing planets worth the size of Neptune, and which takes about 5.1 and 11.8 days to circle their star respectively. The sizes of these planets are worth 1 and 1.4 times of Neptune in comparison.

* The team didn’t succeed in determining the radial velocity signatures of CoRoT-24c, 24b and 22b in spite of putting their best efforts. However, with the CoRoT data, the team confidently rules out all configurations of stars which would mimic a planet.

Astronomers have identified a planet that is similar in size and equally habitable to our Earth. It is revolving around a neighboring star that resides close to us. This alien planet circles around Gliese which is a red dwarf star residing some 581, 20 light years away. It has been spotted by a team of planet hunters. The planet is found to be circling around a star at a specific area in outer space known as the “Goldilocks zone”. The surface temperature of the planet seems supportive towards the formation of liquid water as its range of heat and cold resembles our mother Earth. For a planet which is potentially habitable, the findings offer an attractive case for study. It has been confirmed by Steven Voft, who is an astronomer with the University of California. The process, in which a nearby planet got detected so quickly, proves that the chances of such habitable planets residing around us are even more than what we earlier believed.

This planet is the first of its kind bearing a habitable atmosphere, and will be the most Earth-like planet ever to be discovered in a different solar system.

Most of the new planets discovered by astronomers till date are gas giants (like Jupitar). There are some 400 such exo-planets and all of them are inhospitable to life.

Exquisite detail concerning Gliese 581 and its movements have been studied by astronomers in Hawaii using Keck telescope, and their observations show us through the existence of a number of revolving planets. There are about 6 such new planets discovered and found to be revolving around the star, and this includes the 2 new planets reported by this team in their Astronomical Journal.

Gliese 581g is one such planet which bears a mass worth 3 to 4 times that of our Earth. It takes around 37 days to revolve around the star. According to astronomers, this rocky planet has such gravity as is required to retain an Earth-like atmosphere.

Gliese 581g is also squarely placed at a part of space which makes life easier to thrive upon it. This is quite contradictory with our other planetary discoveries. Earlier we found planets on 2 sides of a habitable zone – one being too cold and the other one being extremely hot. This time, we’re fortunate to come across a planet which resides exactly at the center of a habitable zone. In this case, one side of the planet will always face the star (like our moon faces us constantly), while the other side will experience constant darkness. The planet will have its most habitable region upon its line that lies between darkness and light.

Longitude is one of the key factors that support multiple ranges of stable climates. All new life forms will thus have so many options towards evolution based on their longitude. The average temperature of the planet is supposed to range between -31 to -12C, while the ground temperature might vary between blazing hot and freezing cold on the bright side and the dark side respectively.

The probability of systems that exists with planets which are potentially habitable is 10-20%. It’s going to be a fairly large number if you get it multiplied by number of stars in our milky way i.e. by hundreds of billions. So, if you look into our galaxy, you’ll naturally come across tens of billions of such systems.

NASA has designed a spacecraft that trails a pale blue dot known as Earth as it goes around the sun some thirty million kilometers away. Our galaxy is speckled by millions of such pale blue dots, and this spacecraft was designed for identifying these objects. Kepler, as this spacecraft is named, was launched in 2009 with high hopes of taking a census of planets that resembled our Earth. Its primary objective was to figure out how rare or how common are the forms of life or the conditions under which life may have thrived in those planets.

Kepler is just midway through a 3.5-year campaign. It has not been there for a long period to be able to produce conclusive proof of habitable worlds beyond our solar system, and yet its discoveries have proved to be far more tantalizing. Being small is often considered to be ‘good’ in this system — small resembles some thing like our Earth and unlike the planet Jupiter. Out of all planetary objects that this space observatory has netted, 5 belong to 8 of the smallest worlds ever known to have existed beyond our solar system. Out of the five new exoplanets or ‘extra solar planets’, all are known to be revolving around a star called Kepler 11 which resembles our Sun, and resides some 2,000 light-years from us. The six-planet Kepler 11 system once discovered was announced by a group of researchers.

Some 150,000 stars are being tracked continuously by Kepler. Just as a planet transits any of these planets across the face, a slight dip is registered by the spacecraft within the apparent brightness of the star. A good deal of planetary information is being carried through these brief and subtle transits. The orbital parameters of a planet are being drawn out of the transit frequencies, while its diameter is being conveyed by the amount of dimming. You’ll rarely come across such planets with such fortuitous alignments. Multiple transiting planets are known to be hosted by only a single star apart from Kepler 11. In order to transit multiple planets an almost planetary system has to be in place. The scaled-up vinyl LP has been compared by Lissauer with Kepler 11 system’s flatness which seems quite astonishing.

New planets discovered by the Kepler 11 system are quite densely packed in a way as if all of them would stay put to the orbit of Venus – the planet which stays next to Mercury. (A majority of these newly discovered worlds are actually quite close to their host star, and thus hotter than any habitable planet.)

Kepler 11 planets are of lower densities and comprise of light elements and lack rock and iron, which turns them into midsize worlds which resemble small Neptunes than the habitable super-size Earths.

It’s exciting to have one single system of different worlds comprising multiple planets which share their secrets while transiting. It actually provides more ground for an uncommon test bed of theories concerning planetary evolution and formation. Planetary science is actually a comparative study, but in reality you can only compare them under similar environmental conditions. The Kepler 11 system depicts a great laboratory, more improved than the other planetary systems, to observe all planetary objects and compare them with each other. It truly helps us to gather more information on the evolution of these new planets discovered with time, and under a contained system.

It’s been an end to a long waiting period for scientists all over the world. NASA scientists have been carrying on various un-manned space flights for years in the pursuit of a planet that resembles our Earth. Many of these space flights were based on expensive research programs carried out by NASA. They have brought us closer to the truth regarding possibilities of an inhabitable planet nearer or far beyond our own solar system. Various space shuttles have shown us through pictures depicting possibilities of multiple life forms beyond Earth, but the quest for life remained unresolved for long.

It’s time for celebration, as the celestial detectives have confirmed the existence of 2 new stars crossing or transiting the face of the same star some 2,000 light years beyond our Earth. This is the first discovery of its kind as announced by the NASA scientists of late.

According to a member of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center the two new planets discovered are found to have a close resemblance with our Earth in size i.e. each of them are about 1.5 times our Earth.

Kepler mission has already filed the reports of the new planets discovered. The spacecraft was sent out in the universe to monitor objects at one specific area of the sky and draw closer if it identifies any Earth-sized planets. In reality, it’s much beyond than just discovering other planets. Its aim is to carry on an extensive research on certain matters.

Scientists have also come to know more about the density of the new planets discovered using the Kepler telescope. They now have more information about the composition of the crust of such planets: liquid, solid, rocky or gaseous as per the scientists. Planetary candidates with a certain density can be confirmed as planets. Such data will eventually help scientists to know if other habitable planets as Earth are there in our universe or not. A report from European scientists has confirmed the identification of a Sun-like star that has seven planets revolving around it, though they haven’t been seen as yet.

Orbits of these two planets have been determined by NASA scientists through the use of radio frequencies and timing variations. Kepler B takes half as much time to go round its Sun than Kepler C.

According to a member of the Terrestrial Magnetism Department of the Carnegie Institution, such data has real potential to inform us more about the formation of these planets. These two huge planets have been found to be quite stable in the close vicinity of each other. It seems as if each one is tugging on the other quite like that of our Saturn and Jupiter.

There’s a huge possibility that these planets may have migrated from distant space as the formation of two big stars is not quite possible in the vicinity of the Sun. These expeditions have so much to share with us regarding the formation of such huge planets billions of years. It’s truly exciting to know more about the process of identifying other Earth-sized planets. Constellation Lyra bears such planets around us. Five systems have been identified with the association of more than one such planet. According to the mission scientists, a telescope worth $600 million has identified some 700 such planetary candidates within these systems.

So, how many planets are out there? I know you must be thinking that. I definitely was thinking that. That’s why I created this site I want to keep track of all the new (and old) planets. Every time I seem to open the paper, or look online I seem to stumble upon a heading – New Planet Discovered! Again? Really? Alright, if you say so.  There are after all, thousands, no millions of tiny dots out there in that deep black sky.  (I encourage anyone to get out of highly populated areas to get the full effect of a night sky) So where was i? Ah yes, the glimmer in my eye when I created this site.  So this will be a live journal or blog if you will, of new found planets. Exciting isn’t it? (don’t answer that)

Without further aideu our first contestant

Planet Diamond Discovered – Oooooo ahhhhhhh

Astronomers have discovered an entire new planet evidently made from diamond. It races all round a very small star, finishing an orbit every 2 hours and ten minutes. The planet is far denser than others and is composed mainly of carbon, which means the planet is effectively a diamond…so I wonder how long it will take for our intergalactic space thief’s to snatch that up! Oh and please let’s try and not tell all the diamond companies here on earth about this – i have a feeling they are already in mass hysteria.   I can picture there meetings already – “What do you mean a WHOLE planet made of diamonds?? How are we going try and project the scarcity mood now! I WANT SOME BUTTS!”… or something like that.

Astronomers also hypothesize that in addition to carbon the new planet probably consists of oxygen, with larger amounts close to its surface. The high density has been said to point out the lack of lighter elements like hydrogen and helium. – So are we going to find E.T or what? I for one would welcome our new overlords!

Alright, so new planet discovered #1, in the books. I look forward to sharing new great discoveries with you all. To infinity and beyond!

Ok, that was gay.