A new discovery that NASA has announced about. NASA has called the new planet Kepler-22b, it took the name out of the spacecraft Kepler which discovered the planet among more than 1000 other planets.
The new planet exist out of our solar system, it is more similar to earth than any other discovered planet.
The planet, Kepler-22b, is slightly larger than Earth and orbits a star about 600 light years away. It’s 15 percent closer to its star than Earth is to the sun, but Kepler-22b’s star is dimmer and smaller than ours. The planet’s year is 290 days.
NASA has yet to confirm whether the planet has a rocky surface or is gaseous or liquid, or if it has an atmosphere. Of the more than 1,000 new exo-planets (meaning planets outside our solar system) discovered by the Kepler mission, 54 have been thought to orbit within the habitable (i.e. “Goldilocks”, as in “not too hot, not too cold”) zone. This is the first confirmation
Kepler Mission has discovered around 1300 planets so far and Kepler-22 is the first planet about whom NASA has said with certainty that it may support vegetation there. Kepler computed planet temperatures are based on an assumption that the planet is in equilibrium with radiation from its star balanced by its own black body radiation, taking into account some reflection of radiation from the planet (albedo). Actual albedo is unknown and unless more definite information is available in the discovery paper, we assume a “generic” albedo of 0.3. The temperatures do not take into account atmospheric properties (greenhouse effect), since these are unknown. In the case of Jupiter, not only does it have an atmosphere to complicate things, but a significant internal heat source as well.