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Kepler, 2009

A Search for Habitable Planets

 

An artist's rendition of the Kepler-35 planetary system, in which a Saturn-size planet orbits a pair of stars. Kepler-35b orbits its smaller and cooler host stars than our sun every 131 days, and the stellar pair orbits each other every 21 days.

 

NASA's Kepler mission was launched on March 6, 2009 to discover Earth-like planets. Since then, it has discovered the first transiting circumbinary system -- multiple planets orbiting two suns -- 4,900 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, proving that more than one planets can form and survive in orbit around a binary star.

 

Image Credit: Lynette Cook

Image used with permission

Date: June 7, 2013

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Uploaded on June 7, 2019
Taken on June 7, 2013