Kepler's Big News Continued

The diagram above shows the newly discovered planetary system Kepler-11. It is surprisingly compact and it is very flat. This diagram is from Jack Lissauer’s presentation February 1, 2001 and the article is in Nature’s 2011 Feb 3 issue. All of these planets are low-mass and low-density planets and their sizes range from 2-5 Earths, so-called “super earths”.

The diagram below shows the segment of the planetary candidates that are in the habitable zone, roughly in the area where liquid water might be present. On the far right the legend shows Jupiter-sized planets on the top, then Neptune-size planets and finally Earth-sized planets. If you would like to see both PowerPoint presentations they can be found at http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=98.