NASA's retired Kepler telescope discovers seven blazing planets orbiting a star

NASA just announced the discovery of a solar system with seven planets orbiting the host star. 

Unfortunately, none are capable of supporting life as each one of them are scorched by their star which is 10% larger and 5% hotter than the sun in our solar system. In fact, all the planets there receive more heat than any planet in our solar system. 

This solar system is designated Kepler-385 and is among the few known ones so far which has more than six planets.

Seven new planets orbiting a distant star have been revealed in a review of @NASAExoplanets data by our retired Kepler Space Telescope: https://t.co/vnJIAkBmjw

All the planets in the system, named Kepler-385, are larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune, and are scorched by… pic.twitter.com/HmJIqBFh5h

— NASA (@NASA)

Interestingly, NASA has prepared a complete Kepler catalogue which consists of 4,376 planet candidates residing within 709 multi-planet systems.

Seven new exoplanets added to the list

The discovery of seven new exoplanets resulted from the continued study of data from the Kepler space telescope. This telescope, launched in 2009, was NASA's first for hunting exoplanets and ceased its operations after an extended mission in 2018.

The Kepler telescope is used to discover exoplanets by noticing dips of starlight around a star (which is caused by an orbiting planet). The longer the duration between two dips, the farther the planet is from the star in its orbit whereas a planet in a tight orbit would cause the light dips in relatively quick succession.

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observatory in space, which was launched in 2018, uses the same technique.

According to the Kepler data, all seven of these new exoplanets are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. Moreover, the first two planets in the system are believed to be rocky with thin atmospheres whereas the next five planets (twice the size of Earth) are expected to have thick atmospheres.

"We’ve assembled the most accurate list of Kepler planet candidates and their properties to date,” said Jack Lissauer, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in a statement.

“NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered the majority of known exoplanets, and this new catalogue will enable astronomers to learn more about their characteristics,” he added.