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Tag: Ames Research Center

  • NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    NASA’s Kepler Finds Extra-Solar Planets Smaller Than Earth

    Over the past year, NASA’s Kepler mission has found hundreds of possible planets outside of our solar system, and even a few candidates for Earth-like planets.

    This week, astronomers revealed that a new system has been found that contains planets smaller than Earth. The new data has been presented in a paper published recently in the journal Nature.

    The planets orbit around a star called Kepler-37, located around 210 light-years from our solar system. The smallest of the planest found, known as Kepler-37b, is only one-third the size of Earth – smaller than the planet Mercury and just slightly larger than Earth’s moon. The planet is not presumed to have an atmosphere, and scientists predict that life on the planet isn’t likely.

    “Even Kepler can only detect such a tiny world around the brightest stars it observes,” said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center. “The fact we’ve discovered tiny Kepler-37b suggests such little planets are common, and more planetary wonders await as we continue to gather and analyze additional data.”

    Two other planets were found in the Kepler-37 system. Kepler-37c orbits further out and is slightly smaller than Venus, or around three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d is the furthest planet out, and is around twice the size of Earth. Kepler-37 itself is slightly smaller and cooler than the sun.

    All three of the planets orbit Kepler-37 at less than than the distance between the sun and Mercury. They each also orbit their star in 40 days or less. The surface temperature of Kepler-37b is estimated to be higher than 800 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “We uncovered a planet smaller than any in our solar system orbiting one of the few stars that is both bright and quiet, where signal detection was possible,” said Thomas Barclay, lead author of the paper and a Kepler scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. “This discovery shows close-in planets can be smaller, as well as much larger, than planets orbiting our sun.”

    (Image courtesy NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

  • NASA Spots Weather Patterns on Brown Dwarf

    NASA Spots Weather Patterns on Brown Dwarf

    Astronomers this week announced that they have produced a “weather map” for a brown dwarf that shows planet-sized clouds driven by wind.

    Brown dwarfs are objects at the edge of becoming a star. They lack the mass to begin hydrogen fusion, and in some ways are similar to gas giant planets. The new study, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, will provide researchers with a better understanding of brown dwarfs and the atmospheres of the billions of planets outside our solar system.

    “With Hubble and Spitzer, we were able to look at different atmospheric layers of a brown dwarf, similar to the way doctors use medical imaging techniques to study the different tissues in your body,” said Daniel Apai, principal investigator on the research at the University of Arizona.

    Apai refers to the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, which were used simultaneously to observe a brown dwarf named 2MASSJ22282889-431026. He and his colleauges found that its light varied every 90 minutes as the object rotated, depending in what wavelength of infrared light it was observed. These variations were discovered to be the different layers of the brown dwarf’s clouds, which swirl around the its atmosphere.

    “Unlike the water clouds of Earth or the ammonia clouds of Jupiter, clouds on brown dwarfs are composed of hot grains of sand, liquid drops of iron, and other exotic compounds,” said Mark Marley, co-author of the study and a research scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center. “So this large atmospheric disturbance found by Spitzer and Hubble gives a new meaning to the concept of extreme weather.”

    This was the first time astronomers were able to study the variability of a brown dwarf’s atmosphere at different altitudes at the same time. Researchers are planning to do the same with other nearby brown dwarfs.

    “What we see here is evidence for massive, organized cloud systems, perhaps akin to giant versions of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter,” said Adam Showman, a theorist at the University of Arizona. “These out-of-sync light variations provide a fingerprint of how the brown dwarf’s weather systems stack up vertically. The data suggest regions on the brown dwarf where the weather is cloudy and rich in silicate vapor deep in the atmosphere coincide with balmier, drier conditions at higher altitudes – and vice versa.”

  • 461 New Planet Candidates Discovered by NASA’s Kepler, Including Four Earth-Like Ones

    461 New Planet Candidates Discovered by NASA’s Kepler, Including Four Earth-Like Ones

    Astronomers last week announced that they estimate there to be 100 billion planets throughout the Milky Way Galaxy. This week, Astronomers announced 461 new candidates for extra-solar planets have been discovered.

    NASA‘s Kepler mission has been discovering exoplanets for years now, and the number of confirmed exoplanets is currently 105. As astronomers dig more deeply into Kepler data, smaller planet candidates and multi-planet systems are becoming less rare. The new group of candidates includes four Earth-like planets that are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their star in a region where liquid water might exist.

    “There is no better way to kick off the start of the Kepler extended mission than to discover more possible outposts on the frontier of potentially life-bearing worlds,” said Christopher Burke, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute.

    The number of exoplanet candidates discovered in Kepler data now sits at 2,740 planets orbiting 2,046 stars – a 20% increase from February 2012. The planet candidates are discovered by Kepler when they transit in front of their star, changing its brightness. The Kepler space telescope measures the brightness of over 150,00 stars looking for changes in their brightness. Three transits are required to declare a potential planet, and candidate data is then analyzed for known errors before follow-up observations can confirm the presence of an exoplanet.

    “The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits– orbital periods similar to Earth’s,” said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when.”

    (Image courtesy NASA Ames Research Center/W. Stenzel)

  • Ancient Microbes Found Under Antarctic Lake

    A team of researchers has uncovered a community of bacteria living in one of the most inhospitable place on Earth: the dark, cold, salty environment under a remote lake in Antarctica. The discovery will help teach scientists how life can be sustained in extreme environments, including places beyond our planet.

    Lake Vida, where the discovery took place, lies under nearly 65 feet of ice. It contains no oxygen and possesses the highest concentration of nitrous oxide levels of any natural body of water on Earth. The water is around six times as salty as seawater and has an average temperature of -8 degrees Fahrenheit.

    “This study provides a window into one of the most unique ecosystems on Earth,” said Alison Murray, a molecular microbial ecologist and polar researcher at the Desert Research Institute (DRI) and lead author of a report on the findings published the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition. “Our knowledge of geochemical and microbial processes in lightless icy environments, especially at subzero temperatures, has been mostly unknown up until now. This work expands our understanding of the types of life that can survive in these isolated, cryoecosystems and how different strategies may be used to exist in such challenging environments.”

    Though previous studies indicate that Lake Vida has been isolated from any outside influences for over 3,000 years, the researchers stated that the habitat is home to a surprisingly diverse and abundant variety of bacteria. The microbes survive without a current source of sunlight.

    “This system is probably the best analog we have for possible ecosystems in the subsurface waters of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and Jupiter’s moon Europa,” said Chris McKay, a co-author of the report and senior scientist at NASA‘s Ames Research Center.

    A geochemical analysis of samples from the lake suggest chemical reactions between the briny water and iron-rich sediments produce nitrous oxide and hydrogen, which may provide energy to the microbes.