The exoplanet, discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, was officially named K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb. (Image: D. Specht et al, Kepler K2) NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has spotted a new discovery resembling Jupiter, even though the instrument stopped working four years ago. An international team of astrophysicists using NASA Kepler Space Telescope, which ceased operations in 2018, discovered a Jupiter-like exoplanet 17,000 light-years from Earth, making it the farthest exoplanet ever found by Kepler. The exoplanetofficially named K2-2016-BLG-0005Lb, was detected in data recorded by Kepler in 2016. Throughout its life, Kepler observed more than 2,700 now confirmed planets. “Kepler was also able to observe the weather or daylight continuously, allowing us to accurately determine the mass of the exoplanet and its orbital distance from its host star,” said Eamonn Kerins, an astronomer at the University of Manchester. in the UK. he said in a statement. “They are basically the identical duo of Jupiter in terms of their mass and position from their sun, which is about 60% of the mass of our sun.” The team, led by David Specht, Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester, took advantage of a phenomenon known as gravitational lens to locate the exoplanet. With this phenomenon, it was predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativityobjects in space can be seen and studied more closely when light from a background star is distorted and therefore magnified by the gravity of a nearby mass object. Hoping to use distorted light from a distant star to detect an exoplanet, the team used three months of observations by Kepler in the part of the sky where that planet is. “To see the result requires almost perfect alignment between the planetary system in the foreground and a star background,” Kerins added in the same statement. “The probability of a background star being affected in this way by a planet is tens to hundreds of millions to one against. But there are hundreds of millions of stars to the center of our galaxy. So Kepler just sat and watched for three months.” The team then collaborated with Iain McDonald, another astronomer at the University of Manchester who developed a new search algorithm. Together, they managed to reveal five candidates in the data, with one showing clear signs of an exoplanet. Other terrestrial observations of the same part of the sky confirmed the same signals that Kepler saw for the possible exoplanet. “The difference in advantage between Kepler and the observers here on Earth has allowed us to triangle where the planetary system is along our line of sight,” Kerins said. Aside from the excitement of discovering an exoplanet with an instrument that is no longer even in operation, the team’s work is remarkable because Kepler was not designed to discover exoplanets using this phenomenon. It is important to note, however, that in 2016, Kepler’s mission expanded. In 2013, after two failures of the reaction wheel, it was proposed to use Kepler for a “second light” K2 mission that would see the field detect potentially habitable exoplanets. This extension was approved in 2014 and the shipment was extended far beyond the expected expiration date of the scope until the fuel finally ran out on October 30, 2018. “Kepler was never designed to find planets using microscopes, so in many ways it’s amazing that it did,” Kerins said, adding that upcoming instruments such as NASA’s Nancy Grace Space Telescope and the European Space Euclid mission Service, they could be capable of using microfiches to study exoplanets and will be able to advance this research. “Romeo and Euclid, on the other hand, will be optimized for this kind of work. They will be able to complete the census of the planet that Kepler started,” Kerins said. “We will learn how typical the architecture of our solar system is. The data will also allow us to test our ideas about how planets form. This is the beginning of a new exciting chapter in our search for other worlds.” This discovery described in a study was published on March 31 on the pre-print server ArXiv.org and has been submitted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Email Chelsea Gohd at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
