The vast space beyond our space in the Milky Way has always been the frontier of our imaginations. In 2009 the launch of the Kepler Space Observatory gave us an eye in the vastness through which we can explore and discover worlds we never thought could exists. The Kepler mission has gained fame for recently discovering a series of Earth-like planets that may be suitable to sustain life as we know it.
The Kepler examines possible planets by looking at their stars. When a planet orbits in between a star and the Kepler there is a slight variation in the amount of light emitted by the star. By recording these variations the Kepler can determine the distance, size, orbit, and even the type of terrain the orbiting planet is expected to have. Planets are not the only thing the Kepler has discovered. This past week, the observatory noticed a series of possible alien matter orbiting the star KIC 8462852 in very tight formation. This is unusual, as the star is quite mature. Normally young stars have a variety of dust and other particles circling around them, but as the star ages these objects are pulled in by the star's gravity.
What could these objects represent? Could they be artificial in design? The Kepler Observatory’s discoveries have sparked a large series of concept artwork of what we think these planets would look like. From hot Jupiter-like planets, to arid wastelands, to vast red grass fields, here we present to you the various concepts for worlds discovered by the Kepler.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
Twice as big in volume as the Earth, HD 40307g straddles the line between “Super-Earth” and “mini-Neptune” and scientists aren’t sure if it has a rocky surface or one that’s buried beneath thick layers of gas and ice. One thing is certain, though: at eight time Earth’s mass, its gravitational pull is much, much stronger.
NASA/JPL
Astronomers have found evidence for the formation of young, rocky planets around the star HD 23514 located in the well-known Pleiades (Seven Sisters) star cluster that is easily visible in the current evening sky. Using an infrared sensitive camera (MICHELLE) on the Gemini North Telescope, Joseph Rhee of UCLA and his collaborators measured heat from hot dust surrounding a 100 million-year-old star in the bright star cluster. The star has properties very much like our Sun except that it is 45 times younger and is orbited by hundreds of thousands of times more dust. The star is also one of the very few solar-type stars known to be orbited by warm dust particles. These warm emissions betray catastrophic collisions in an evolving young planetary system around an adolescent-age solar type star. The emission appears to originate from dust located in the terrestrial planet zone between about 1/4 to two astronomical units (AUs) from the parent star HD 23514, a region corresponding to the orbits of Mercury and Mars in our solar system.
NASA/Gemini Observatory/Lynette Cook
The extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b is a “hot Jupiter” class planet orbiting a star that is much hotter than our Sun. Hubble Space Telescope’s millionth science observation was trained on this planet to look for the presence of water vapor and to study the planet’s atmospheric structure via spectroscopy. Planets with orbits inclined nearly edge-on to Earth can be observed passing in front of and behind their stars. This allows for the planetary atmospheres to be studied by Hubble’s spectrometers. Hubble’s unique capabilities allow astronomers to do follow-up observations of exoplanets to characterize the composition and structure of their atmospheres.
NASA/ESA
Like Luke Skywalker’s planet “Tatooine” in Star Wars, Kepler-16b orbits a pair of stars. Depicted here as a terrestrial planet, Kepler-16b might also be a gas giant like Saturn. Prospects for life on this unusual world aren’t good, as it has a temperature similar to that of dry ice. But the discovery indicates that the movie’s iconic double-sunset is anything but science fiction.
NASA/JPL
The Kepler-16 system combines the best of both worlds with planetary transits across an eclipsing binary system. This makes Kepler-16b one of the best-measured planets outside our solar system. Kepler-16 orbits a slowly rotating K-dwarf that is, nevertheless, very active with numerous star spots. Its other parent star is a small red dwarf. The planetary orbital plane is aligned within half a degree of the stellar binary orbital plane. All these features combine to make Kepler-16 of major interest to studies of planet formation as well as astrophysics.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt
Kepler-22b is a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone—the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun. Scientists do not yet know if the planet has a predominantly rocky, gaseous, or liquid composition. It’s possible that the world would have clouds in its atmosphere, as depicted here in the artist’s interpretation.
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Discovered in October 2013 using direct imaging, PSO J318.5-22 belongs to a special class of planets called rogue, or free-floating, planets. Wandering alone in the galaxy, they do not orbit a parent star. Not much is known about how these planets come to exist, but scientists theorize that they may be either failed stars or planets ejected from very young systems after an encounter with another planet. These rogue planets glow faintly from the heat of their formation. Once they cool down, they will be dancing in the dark.
NASA/JPL
This artist’s concept illustrates the two Saturn-sized planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission. The star system is oriented edge-on, as seen by Kepler, such that both planets cross in front, or transit, their star, named Kepler-9. This is the first star system found to have multiple transiting planets.
NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
An artist’s conception shows Kepler-36c as it might look from the surface of neighboring Kepler-36b. Kepler-36b is likely a rocky “super-Earth,” whereas Kepler-36c is more Neptune-like. These planets are 20 times more closely spaced and have a larger density contrast than any adjacent pair of planets in the solar system.
NASA/Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics/David Aguilar
Kepler-186f is the first Earth-size planet discovered in the potentially “habitable zone” around another star, where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. Its star is much cooler and redder than our Sun. If plant life does exist on a planet like Kepler-186f, its photosynthesis could have been influenced by the star’s red-wavelength photons, making for a color palette that's very different than the greens on Earth. This discovery was made by Kepler, NASA’s planet hunting telescope.
NASA/JPL
Kepler-10b orbits one of the 150,000 stars that the spacecraft is monitoring between the constellations of Cygnus and Lyra. We aim our mosaic of 42 detectors there, under the swan’s wing, just above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. The star itself is very similar to our own sun in temperature, mass and size, but older with an age of over 8 billion years, compared to the 4½ billion years of our own sun. It’s a quiet star, slowly spinning with a weak magnetic field and few of the sun spots that characterize our own sun. The star’s about 560 light-years from our solar system and one of the brighter stars that Kepler is monitoring. It was the first we identified as potentially harboring a very small transiting planet. The transits of the planet were first seen in July of 2009. The diameter of Kepler 10b is only about 1.4 times the diameter of Earth and its mass is about 4.5 times that of Earth. It is the best example of a rocky planet to date.
NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry
