Western planetary scientists Chris Fox and Prof. Paul Wiegert have discovered a new exoplanet - Kepler 159d - orbiting a star in a 'habitable zone' about 500 light-years from Earth.

Ever since Chris Fox was a young boy, he wanted to visit alien planets. Now he has gone an found one – although, at about 500 light years from Earth, it would be a tough commute.

The Western University graduate student has teamed with Paul Wiegert, Graduate Program Director at Western’s renowned Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), in discovering the exoplanet – provisionally known as Kepler 159d.

Fox and Wiegert did not actually view Kepler 159d; rather, they deduced its presence by investigating its gravitational effects on the orbits of Kepler 159b and Kepler 159c.

These two previously discovered exoplanets were detected by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory in space charged with finding planets outside our solar system, particularly alien planets that are around the same size as Earth in the habitable regions of their parent star.

“I’ve been a space buff since I was a little kid, I watched all of the old sci-fi shows and I always wanted to go to another planet,” says Fox. “We can’t go to the planets quite yet, so this is as good as it gets for now.”

Kepler 159d has a mass comparable to that of Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. And like Saturn, it is likely mostly composed of gases with no distinct solid surface.

Whether Kepler 159d has rings or moons like Saturn is still unknown but what is known is that it orbits within its star’s ‘Habitable Zone,’ which means temperatures are in the range suitable for Earth-life – although but there is no evidence on whether there is actually any life in the system.

The central star of Kepler 159d’s planetary system is a red dwarf star (spectral class M0V) with a mass estimated at 52 per cent of that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is about 3600 Celsius (3893 Kelvin) while the Sun’s is 5500C (5770 K).

The finding was published in the scientific journal, </s> Teamed with Paul Wiegert, Graduate Program Director at Western's renowned Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), Fox discovered the exoplanet—provisionally known as Kepler 159d—by investigating gravitational effects on Kepler 159b and Kepler 159c. These two previously discovered exoplanets were detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory in space charged with finding planets outside our solar system, particularly alien planets that are around the same size as Earth in the habitable regions of their parent star.

Kepler 159d was not actually seen by Fox and Wiegert rather it was variations in the orbits of Kepler 159b and Kepler that allowed the planetary scientists to deduce its presence.

"I've been a space buff since I was a little kid, I watched all of the old sci-fi shows and I always wanted to go to another planet," says Fox. "We can't go to the planets quite yet, so this is as good as it gets for now."

Kepler 159d has a mass comparable to that of Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. And like Saturn, it is likely mostly composed of gases with no distinct solid surface.

Whether Kepler 159d has rings or moons like Saturn is still unknown but what is known is that it orbits within its star's 'Habitable Zone,' which means temperatures are in the range suitable for Earth-life but there is no evidence on whether there is actually any life in the system.

The central star of Kepler 159d's planetary system is a red dwarf star (spectral class M0V) with a mass estimated at 52 per cent of that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is about 3600 Celsius (3893 Kelvin) while the Sun's is 5500C (5770 K).

The finding was published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Explore further: Finding a 'lost' planet, about the size of Neptune

More information: Chris Fox et al, A New Planet in the Kepler-159 System From Transit Timing Variations, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2738 </s> Credit: University of Western Ontario

Ever since Chris Fox was a young boy, he wanted to visit alien planets. With no immediate plans for such a voyage, the Western University graduate student has done the next best thing. He's gone and found one.

Teamed with Paul Wiegert, Graduate Program Director at Western's renowned Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), Fox discovered the exoplanet—provisionally known as Kepler 159d—by investigating gravitational effects on Kepler 159b and Kepler 159c. These two previously discovered exoplanets were detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory in space charged with finding planets outside our solar system, particularly alien planets that are around the same size as Earth in the habitable regions of their parent star.

Kepler 159d was not actually seen by Fox and Wiegert rather it was variations in the orbits of Kepler 159b and Kepler that allowed the planetary scientists to deduce its presence.

"I've been a space buff since I was a little kid, I watched all of the old sci-fi shows and I always wanted to go to another planet," says Fox. "We can't go to the planets quite yet, so this is as good as it gets for now."

Kepler 159d has a mass comparable to that of Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. And like Saturn, it is likely mostly composed of gases with no distinct solid surface.

Simulated view of the Kepler 159 system. Credit: University of Western Ontario

Whether Kepler 159d has rings or moons like Saturn is still unknown but what is known is that it orbits within its star's 'Habitable Zone,' which means temperatures are in the range suitable for Earth-life but there is no evidence on whether there is actually any life in the system.

The central star of Kepler 159d's planetary system is a red dwarf star (spectral class M0V) with a mass estimated at 52 per cent of that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is about 3600 Celsius (3893 Kelvin) while the Sun's is 5500C (5770 K).

The finding was published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Credit: University of Western Ontario

More information: Chris Fox et al, A New Planet in the Kepler-159 System From Transit Timing Variations, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2018). Journal information: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Chris Fox et al, A New Planet in the Kepler-159 System From Transit Timing Variations,(2018). DOI: 10.1093/mnras/sty2738 </s> Ever since Chris Fox was a young boy, he wanted to visit alien planets. With no immediate plans for such a voyage, the Western University graduate student has done the next best thing. He's gone and found one.

Teamed with Paul Wiegert, Graduate Program Director at Western's renowned Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX), Fox discovered the exoplanet - provisionally known as Kepler 159d - by investigating gravitational effects on Kepler 159b and Kepler 159c. These two previously discovered exoplanets were detected by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory in space charged with finding planets outside our solar system, particularly alien planets that are around the same size as Earth in the habitable regions of their parent star.

For more data, images and an animation, please visit https:/

Kepler 159d was not actually seen by Fox and Wiegert rather it was variations in the orbits of Kepler 159b and Kepler that allowed the planetary scientists to deduce its presence.

"I've been a space buff since I was a little kid, I watched all of the old sci-fi shows and I always wanted to go to another planet," says Fox. "We can't go to the planets quite yet, so this is as good as it gets for now."

Kepler 159d has a mass comparable to that of Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system. And like Saturn, it is likely mostly composed of gases with no distinct solid surface.

Whether Kepler 159d has rings or moons like Saturn is still unknown but what is known is that it orbits within its star's 'Habitable Zone,' which means temperatures are in the range suitable for Earth-life but there is no evidence on whether there is actually any life in the system.

The central star of Kepler 159d's planetary system is a red dwarf star (spectral class M0V) with a mass estimated at 52 per cent of that of our Sun. Its surface temperature is about 3600 Celsius (3893 Kelvin) while the Sun's is 5500C (5770 K).

The finding was published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Western University delivers an academic experience second to none. Since 1878, The Western Experience has combined academic excellence with life-long opportunities for intellectual, social and cultural growth in order to better serve our communities. Our research excellence expands knowledge and drives discovery with real-world application. Western attracts individuals with a broad worldview, seeking to study, influence and lead in the international community. </s> Chris Fox has had a love affair with the stars since he was a child. Now, the Ph D student in the department of physics and astronomy at Western University is celebrating the discovery of a new exoplanet, a planet that is outside of our solar system.

"I was very excited," said Fox. "I got what I was looking for. It was a really good feeling."

Chris Fox, Ph D student at Western University

The new planet is called Kepler 159d. Fox found it by investigating gravitational effects on Kepler 159b and Kepler 159c, two exoplanets previously discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

A red letter day

"Discovering new planets is not an everyday affair," said Paul Wiegert, Graduate Program Director at Western's Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration. "We were pretty ecstatic finding a new planet. A red letter day, for sure."

Wiegert said this discovery is not only exciting, it will help scientists understand our solar system.

"The beauty of exoplanets and astronomical research in general is that it tells us about our place in the universe," said Wiegert. "As we discover new exoplanets, we start to discover that these planets are actually quite different than what we have in our solar system."

The Goldilocks zone

Kepler 159d is about the same size as Saturn and orbits its star in 88 days, according to Fox. But, that's not all.

"One of the more exciting things is that it's in what's called the habitable zone. It's not too cold and it's not too hot. It's called the Goldilocks zone," said Fox.

That means there's the potential to have liquid water. But, does that mean there could be life on Kepler 159d?

"It would be a good first step," said Fox. "We have no indication one way or the other if there's life on it. And, since the planet is so big, it's probably a gas giant so if it did have life, it would probably be very, very different than what we think of as life here on earth."

Answering those types of "really, really big questions" is all part of the process said Wiegert.

"But, we have a long way to go." </s> The size of the newfound exoplanet places it right in the middle between Earth and Neptune, which is four times larger than our home planet.

Leading an entire team of astronomers from universities in Canada, Germany, and the U.S., grad school student Merrin Peterson has just discovered a new exoplanet “twice the size of Earth,” reports Science Daily.

The newfound planet orbits on old and bright star known as Wolf 503 and has been given the name Wolf 503b.

Peterson made the incredible discovery soon after starting her graduate studies at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets of the Université de Montréal in Canada, notes Outer Places.

And, as she herself points out, everything came together quite smoothly.

“The discovery and confirmation of this new exoplanet was very rapid, thanks to the collaboration that I and my advisor, Björn Benneke, are a part of,” Peterson said in a statement.

Together with Benneke, Peterson looked through data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, specifically everything gathered during the spacecraft’s 17th observational campaign, and used the tried-and-true transiting method to spot any potential exoplanets.

As the Inquisitr previously reported, the transiting method involves searching for tiny dips in the brightness of a star, caused by an orbiting planet as it passes in front of it.

“In May, when the latest release of Kepler K2 data came in, we quickly ran a program that allowed us to find as many interesting candidate exoplanets as possible. Wolf 503b was one of them,” said Peterson.

Wolf 503b and its parent star are found a mere 145 light-years away from Earth, in the Virgo constellation, and make a very interesting pair.

For one thing, the exoplanet circles its star in a very tight orbit and sits about 10 times closer to Wolf 503 than Mercury is to the sun. At the same time, Wolf 503b has a radius of 2.03 times that of Earth, which places the exoplanet right near the Fulton gap — a marker that divides all the known Kepler planets into super-Earths and sub-Neptunes based on their size.

First described in a study published last year in the Astronomical Journal, the Fulton gap refers to a shortage of Kepler exoplanets ranging between 1.5 and two times the size of Earth. The study argues that most of the small planets discovered by Kepler and which orbit very close to their stars are either super-Earths, with a radius smaller than 1.5 times that of our planet, or sub-Neptunes, with two to three times the radius of Earth.

“Since there is nothing like them in our solar system, astronomers wonder whether these planets are small and rocky ‘super-Earths’ or gaseous mini-versions of Neptune,” explains Science Daily, citing the Université de Montréal.

Studying Wolf 503b will help scientists figure out more this peculiar class of exoplanets.

“It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of ‘super-Earths’ and ‘sub-Neptunes’ as a whole,” said Benneke.

Meanwhile, Wolf 503 is what astronomers call an “orange dwarf” — a star slightly bigger than our sun, with a mass 0.45 to 0.8 times larger, and slightly less luminous. A more famous example of an orange dwarf star is Alpha Centauri B, one of the three stars in the Alpha Centauri system sitting right on our cosmic doorstep and which could be friendly to life, as recently reported by the Inquisitr.

Unlike Alpha Centauri B, which is only a bit older than the sun, Wolf 503 is about twice as old. Its brightness and close proximity to our planet makes it a perfect study candidate for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, report the sources.

Once is launches in 2021, the telescope could find out more about the atmospheric composition of Wolf 503b by scoping out its parent star with a technique called transit spectroscopy. This will show whether the exoplanet has hydrogen or water molecules in its atmosphere.

“Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature,” said Benneke.

The discovery of Wolf 503b, along with everything we’ve learned about the exoplanet so far, is detailed in a paper available on the pre-print server arXiv. </s> Wolf 503b, an exoplanet twice the size of Earth, has been discovered by an international team of Canadian, American and German researchers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The find is described in a new study whose lead author is Merrin Peterson, an Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx) graduate student who started her master’s degree at Université de Montréal (UdeM) in May.

Wolf 503b is about 145 light years from Earth in the Virgo constellation; it orbits its star every six days and is thus very close to it, about 10 times closer than Mercury is to the Sun.

“The discovery and confirmation of this new exoplanet was very rapid, thanks to the collaboration that I and my advisor, Björn Benneke, are a part of,” Peterson said. “In May, when the latest release of Kepler K2 data came in, we quickly ran a program that allowed us to find as many interesting candidate exoplanets as possible. Wolf 503b was one of them.”

The program the team used identifies distinct, periodic dips that appear in the light curve of a star when a planet passes in front of it. In order to better characterize the system Wolf 503b is part of, the astronomers first obtained a spectrum of the host star at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility. This confirmed the star is an old ‘orange dwarf’, slightly less luminous than the Sun but about twice as old, and allowed a precise determination of the radius of both the star and its companion.

To confirm the companion was indeed a planet and to avoid making a false positive identification, the team obtained adaptive optics measurements from Palomar Observatory and also examined archival data. With these, they were able to confirm that there were no binary stars in the background and that the star did not have another, more massive companion that could be interpreted as a transiting planet.

Wolf 503b is interesting, firstly, because of its size. Thanks to the Kepler telescope, we know that most of the planets in the Milky Way that orbit close to their stars are about as big as Wolf 503b, somewhere between that the size of the Earth and Neptune (which is 4 times bigger than Earth). Since there is nothing like them in our solar system, astronomers wonder whether these planets are small and rocky ‘super-Earths’ or gaseous mini versions of Neptune.

One recent discovery also shows that there are significantly fewer planets that are between 1.5 and 2 times the size of Earth than those either smaller or larger than that. This drop, called the Fulton gap, could be what distinguishes the two types of planets from each other, researchers say in their study of the discovery, published in 2017.

“Wolf 503b is one of the only planets with a radius near the gap that has a star that is bright enough to be amenable to more detailed study that will better constrain its true nature,” explained Björn Benneke, an UdeM professor and member of iREx and CRAQ. “It provides a key opportunity to better understand the origin of this radius gap as well as the nature of the intriguing populations of ‘super-Earths’ and ‘sub-Neptunes’ as a whole.”

The second reason for interest in the Wolf 503b system is that the star is relatively close to Earth, and thus very bright. One of the possible follow-up studies for bright stars is the measurement of their radial velocity to determine the mass of the planets in orbit around them.

A more massive planet will have a greater gravitational influence on its star, and the variation in line-of-sight velocity of the star over time will be greater. The mass, together with the radius determined by Kepler’s observations, gives the bulk density of the planet, which in turn tells us something about its composition. For example, at its radius, if the planet has a composition similar to Earth, it would have to be about 14 times its mass. If, like Neptune, it has an atmosphere rich in gas or volatiles, it would be approximately half as massive.

Because of its brightness, Wolf 503 will also be a prime target for the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. Using a technique called transit spectroscopy, it will be possible to study the chemical content of the planet’s atmosphere, and to detect the presence of molecules like hydrogen and water. This is crucial to verify if it is similar to that of the Earth, Neptune or completely different from the atmospheres of planets in our solar system.

Similar observations can’t be made of most planets found by Kepler, because their host stars are usually much fainter. As a result, the bulk densities and atmospheric compositions of most exoplanets are still unknown.

“By investigating the nature of Wolf 503b, we’ll understand more about the structure of planets near the radius gap and more generally about the diversity of exoplanets present in our galaxy,” said Peterson. “I look forward to learning more about it.” </s> For the first time ever, astronomers detected sodium atoms in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, which suggests it is cloud-free.

“Hot Jupiters” aren’t the only eccentric exoplanets out there. It turns out that “hot Saturns” can be quite whimsical too. For instance, “hot Saturn” WASP-96b seems to be “entirely cloud-free,” says astronomer Nikolay Nikolov, lead author of a recent study on the atmosphere of this peculiar exoplanet.

This strange gas giant (the planet, that is) lies 980 light-years away in the Phoenix constellation. Like all “hot Saturns,” the exoplanet is similar in mass to Saturn and 20 percent bigger than Jupiter. It also orbits its parent star, WASP-96, very closely.

According to Sci-News, it only takes 3.4 days for the “hot Saturn” to complete a full orbit around WASP-96. Such close quarters with the parent star means that the exoplanet is very hot, reaching 1,881 degrees Fahrenheit (or 1,027 degrees Celsius).

Hot exoplanets, especially those as incandescent as WASP-96b, are typically known to have thick atmospheres, with plenty of clouds and hazes. The same goes for some of the coldest planets in the cosmos. However, this strange exoplanet doesn’t fit the mold, Nikolov’s team uncovered.

The researchers managed to take a close look at WASP-96b with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. Known as the world’s most powerful exoplanet-hunting telescope, the VLT enabled the team to gauge the composition of WASP-96b’s atmosphere as they observed the “hot Saturn” passing in front of its parent star.

Their observations pointed to a unique discovery, reveals a news release from the University of Exeter in the U.K., which led the study. For the first time ever, the astronomers found the complete fingerprint of sodium in the spectrum of an exoplanet. This discovery comes just a few days after the first-ever detection of helium in the atmosphere of exoplanet WASP-107b.

“Until now, sodium was revealed either as a very narrow peak or found to be completely missing,” said Nikolov, who is a research fellow at the British university.

Nevertheless, WASP-96b’s atmosphere was found to contain plenty of sodium, present in “levels similar to those found in our own solar system,” notes the news release.

According to the university, these high levels of sodium would make the “hot Saturn” appear bluish in color to a distant observer, because the sodium would absorb the yellow-orange light from the exoplanet’s full spectrum.

Finding sodium in WASP-96’s atmosphere led to another breakthrough. Since the spectral characteristics of sodium atoms can’t be observed in planets with thick atmospheres because their clouds would obscure the view — the element’s “tent-shaped” profile can only be spotted deep in a planet’ atmosphere, notes Nikolov — the team deduced that WASP-96b’s atmosphere has no clouds.

“WASP-96b is the only exoplanet that appears to be entirely cloud-free and shows such a clear sodium signature, making the planet a benchmark for characterization,” Nikolov pointed out.

This exoplanet’s “spectrum is in excellent agreement with cloud-free, solar-abundance models,” his team wrote in their paper, published yesterday in the journal Nature.

This important discovery has now given astronomers the opportunity to observe the full range of possible atmospheres on other planets, which can help shed more light into cloud formation and composition, noted Nikolov.

“WASP-96b will also provide us with a unique opportunity to determine the abundances of other molecules, such as water, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide with future observations,” said study co-author Dr. Ernst de Mooij, from Dublin City University in Ireland. </s> NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary. Officials announced the Kepler Space Telescope’s demise Tuesday.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s elite planet-hunting spacecraft has been declared dead, just a few months shy of its 10th anniversary.

Already well past its expected lifetime, the 9 1/2-year-old Kepler had been running low on fuel for months. Its ability to point at distant stars and identify possible alien worlds worsened dramatically at the beginning of October, but flight controllers still managed to retrieve its latest observations. The telescope has now gone silent, its fuel tank empty.

“Kepler opened the gate for mankind’s exploration of the cosmos,” said retired NASA scientist William Borucki, who led the original Kepler science team.

Kepler discovered 2,681 planets outside our solar system and even more potential candidates. It showed us rocky worlds the size of Earth that, like Earth, might harbor life. It also unveiled incredible super Earths: planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.

NASA’s astrophysics director Paul Hertz estimated that anywhere from two to a dozen of the planets discovered by Kepler are rocky and Earth-sized in the so-called Goldilocks zone. But Kepler’s overall planet census showed that 20 to 50 percent of the stars visible in the night sky could have planets like ours in the habitable zone for life, he said.

The $700 million mission even helped to uncover last year a solar system with eight planets, just like ours.

“It has revolutionized our understanding of our place in the cosmos,” Hertz said. “Now we know because of the Kepler Space Telescope and its science mission that planets are more common than stars in our galaxy.”

Almost lost in 2013 because of equipment failure, Kepler was salvaged by engineers and kept peering into the cosmos, thick with stars and galaxies, ever on the lookout for dips in in the brightness of stars that could indicate an orbiting planet.

“It was like trying to detect a flea crawling across a car headlight when the car was 100 miles away,” said Borucki said.

The resurrected mission became known as K2 and yielded 350 confirmed exoplanets, or planets orbiting other stars, on top of what the telescope had already uncovered since its March 7, 2009, launch from Cape Canaveral.

In all, close to 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed over the past two decades, two-thirds of them thanks to Kepler.

Kepler focused on stars thousands of light-years away and, according to NASA, showed that statistically there’s at least one planet around every star in our Milky Way Galaxy.

Borucki, who dreamed up the mission decades ago, said one of his favorite discoveries was Kepler 22b, a water planet bigger than Earth but where it is not too warm and not too cold — the type “that could lead to life.”

A successor to Kepler launched in April, NASA’s Tess spacecraft, has its sights on stars closer to home. It’s already identified some possible planets.

Kepler showed us that “we live in a galaxy that’s teeming with planets, and we’re ready to take the next step to explore those planets,” she said.

Another longtime spacecraft chasing strange worlds in our own solar system, meanwhile, is also close to death.

NASA’s 11-year-old Dawn spacecraft is pretty much out of fuel after orbiting the asteroid Vesta as well as the dwarf planet Ceres. It remains in orbit around Ceres, which, like Vesta, is in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Two of NASA’s older telescopes have been hit with equipment trouble recently, but have recovered. The 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope resumed science observations last weekend, following a three-week shutdown. The 19-year-old Chandra X-ray Telescope’s pointing system also ran into trouble briefly in October. Both cases involved critical gyroscopes, needed to point the telescopes.

Hertz said all the spacecraft problems were “completely independent” and coincidental in timing.

Now 94 million miles from Earth, Kepler should remain in a safe, stable orbit around the sun. Flight controllers will disable the spacecraft’s transmitters, before bidding a final “good night.”
Kepler 159d, a exoplanet with the same size as Saturn, is discovered by University of Western Ontario student Chris Fox and professor Paul Wiegert.