at NASA are celebrating: the Kepler space telescope has detected a new planetary system. This solar system has been called Kepler-11 is composed of at least six planets, with sizes between 2.3 and 13.5 times the mass of the Earth, which are among the smallest found so far. With the discovery of these planets, orbiting a distant sun-like star about 2000 light years from Earth, Kepler has already detected 1,235 out of worlds Solar System.
Kepler Telescope no longer news. When NASA sent into space for over 2 years, its goal of about 150,000 stars observed simultaneously analyzing its brightness every 30 minutes to detect possible transits of planets, seemed part of the plot of a science fiction novel. However, since its launch in March 2009 has discovered more than 1,200 new exoplanets, nearly three of them every day. In the final hours, NASA announced the discovery of a new solar system that has, at least-six planets that revolve around a star that has been called Kepler-11 and that is very similar to our sun. The size of these planets is among the smallest found to date, with masses that range between 2.3 and 13.5 times that of Earth. Five of these planets in tight orbits, following paths that, if they were in our own solar system, remain within the orbit of Mercury. An orbit is so small that the duration determines the year-the time it takes to complete one revolution around its star-in each of these planets is between 10 and 47 days.
The sixth planet, somewhat larger than the previous ones but whose exact mass has yet to be determined, describe an orbit wide and takes about 118 Earth days to complete one lap around the Kepler-11. A team of 39 researchers from 16 different scientific institutions participated in the discovery of this planetary system and the details of which NASA has released the latest edition of the journal Nature "believes it would be" similar to Neptune or Uranus, "although, we repeat, not been able to determine its mass. This finding, beyond revive the discussion of whether there are habitable planets in large numbers, will serve to better understand the mechanism by which our planetary system formed, as in both orbits the planets are in the same plane. Kepler aims to find "small, rocky planets " having characteristics similar to those on Earth. But most of the findings to date are bodies large gaseous planets similar to Jupiter or even larger. While composing this new system are "small, rocky ", the short distance that separates them from Kepler-11 makes them poor candidates for life. However, this system is not without its charm, and is more compact and more planets discovered so far .
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