The Kepler space telescope retired in 2018 after a nine-year mission that saw it discover a whopping 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, ushering in the modern era of exoplanet research. But there are now three more exoplanets to add to the mission total, even after the telescope has been in the dark for the past five years.
Recently, according to Digital Trendsastronomers were able to use data from the latest Kepler observations to discover three more planets.
Two of the three exoplanets have been confirmedK2-416 b and K2-417 b, and a third planet, EPIC 246251988 b, remains an exoplanet candidate. To go from exoplanet candidate to confirmed exoplanet, an initial observation must be verified through observations from two other telescopes.
The planets themselves may not be the most exciting discoveries, according to the researchers, but what’s special about them is how they were discovered.
How were they discovered?
Elyse Incha, principal investigator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, recounted how Kepler discovered these distant planets in a release: “These are fairly average planets in the grand scheme of Kepler’s observations. But they are exciting because Kepler observed them during their last days of operations.. Shows how good Kepler was at finding planets, even at the end of his life”.
The observations were made during the last few weeks of the telescope’s observations before it was retired on October 30, 2018.
When the spacecraft ran out of fuel, it could no longer point in the correct direction, and its data became blurry. But the researchers were able to use the latest good data to find transits, when a star’s light dips slightly as a planet passes in front of it.
Although the mission is long overdue, the telescope leaves behind a legacy of publicly available data that it collected during its nearly decade-long observations. It has been succeeded by other planet-hunting telescopes such as TESS, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which launched in 2018 and continues to discover new exoplanets.