Bunches of planets!

Caltech-Led Team of Astronomers Finds 18 New Planets

Discovery is the largest collection of confirmed planets around stars more massive than the sun

The twin telescopes at Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The astronomers used Keck to discover 18 new Jupiter-like planets orbiting massive stars.

[Credit: Rick Peterson/ W.M. Keck Observatory]

PASADENA, Calif.—Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

"It's the largest single announcement of planets in orbit around stars more massive than the sun, aside from the discoveries made by the Kepler mission," says John Johnson, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech and the first author on the team's paper, which was published in the December issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Kepler mission is a space telescope that has so far identified more than 1,200 possible planets, though the majority of those have not yet been confirmed.

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13476

Comments

Missy said…

Dude, that's AWESOME! Congrats!!!

December 3, 2011 at 12:29 AM

Anonymous said…

So exciting!!! Congratulations. :)

December 20, 2011 at 2:20 AM

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