In The Stars, There Be Planets...

Image Credit: Science Magazine

A special note:

Congrats to Manor High School for achieving an acceptable rating on the statewide TAKS test!!!

"Since it was launched just over 2 years ago, Kepler has found 116 systems with two planets, 45 with three, eight with four, one with five, and one with six planets, astronomer David Latham of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reported here today at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. That's a total of 171 multiple-planet systems. 'We thought we might see a few multiplanet systems,' Latham says. 'Instead, we found lots of them.'


"The ultimate goal of the Kepler mission, which has an operational lifetime of 3½ years, is to find the abundance of Earth-like planets orbiting stars like our own sun at distances where liquid water—and possibly life—could exist on their surfaces."

Science Magazine link: Stars with multiple planets abound