Artist’s rendering of the Kepler space telescope. (NASA)
An international team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of 44 new extrasolar planets.
The planets were first spotted by the astronomers through data gathered from Campaign #10 of NASA’s Kepler K2 mission.
According to NASA’s Kepler and K2 webpage, campaign #10 ran from July 6, 2016, to September 20, 2016.
To verify their findings, the astronomers compared the K2 information with similar data gathered by the European Space Agency’s Gaia Space Telescope and a number of ground-based telescopes in the US.
Artist’s impression of ESA’s Gaia spacecraft mapping the stars of the Milky Way ((c) ESA/ATG medialab/ESO)
Four of the new planets are said to circle their host stars in less than 24 hours, meaning a year on these planets is less than a day on Earth.
Sixteen of the planets are in the same size class as Earth.
But, one of the planets is was described as being about the size of Venus.
The astronomers suggest that using the validation techniques they developed could help speed up the confirmation of more extrasolar planet candidates.
A study detailing the astronomer’s findings was recently published in The Astronomical Journal.
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