{"id":47868,"date":"2016-07-18T08:37:53","date_gmt":"2016-07-18T18:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=47868"},"modified":"2019-02-11T14:00:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T00:00:02","slug":"earth-like-planets-among-100-identified-by-uh-astronomers-and-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2016\/07\/18\/earth-like-planets-among-100-identified-by-uh-astronomers-and-nasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth-like planets among 100+ identified by <abbr title=\"东精影业\">东精影业<\/abbr>, astronomers and <abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Association\">NASA<\/abbr>"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 2<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span><div class=\"responsive-video-wrap\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iqaK0pLIsXo?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" title=\"Youtube video player\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span> at M&#257;noa <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ifa.hawaii.edu\/\">Institute for Astronomy<\/a> (IfA) and the Maunakea observatories play a critical role in major astronomical discoveries. In July 2016, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/\"><abbr title=\"National Aeronautics and Space Association\">NASA<\/abbr><\/a> and an international team of astronomers announced that they identified 100 new planets, including five bearing similarities to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;These are planets that orbit stars, outside of our solar system, other stars,&rdquo; said Assistant Astronomer <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ifa.hawaii.edu\/~howard\/\">Andrew Howard<\/a><\/strong>. &ldquo;And we used the Kepler space telescope to discover these planets. And then we used four telescopes on Maunakea to characterize these planets and confirm that they are in fact real bonafide planets.&rdquo; <\/p>\n<p>The <abbr>NASA<\/abbr> Kepler space telescope is orbiting the sun on a mission to find Earth-like planets while mapping the universe. The 100 newly discovered planets add to the already-rich diversity of known worlds beyond our Solar System. In its current K2 mission, Kepler identified planetary candidates by focusing on four different sections of space for a period of three months each, looking for eclipses.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;So as the star stays fixed, the planet orbits in front of it casting a small shadow on the star and we see that shadow as the star dimming.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>A team of 44 astronomers from seven countries, including six from <abbr title=\"东精影业\">东精影业<\/abbr>, took a closer look at these planetary candidates\u00a0using the two Keck Telescopes, the Gemini Observatory and the <abbr>NASA<\/abbr> Infrared Telescope Facility, managed by the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Hawai&#699;i<\/span>, on Maunakea.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_47870\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-47870\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/manoa-ifa-100-planets1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"620\" height=\"188\" class=\"size-full wp-image-47870\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/manoa-ifa-100-planets1.jpg 620w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/manoa-ifa-100-planets1-260x79.jpg 260w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-47870\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kepler Telescope images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&ldquo;We used the various telescopes on Maunakea, four different telescopes on Maunakea, to confirm that these planet signals we think we see in the Kepler data are actually planets,&rdquo; said <strong>Evan Sinukoff<\/strong>, <abbr>IfA<\/abbr> graduate student.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;This research, this discovery of a hundred planets, puts our Earth into context,&rdquo; said Howard. &ldquo;It places us in a cosmic context and shows us where we fit into the fabric of the universe.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That fabric includes other potentially Earth-like planets, such as the five found among the 100 planets discovery. These planets appear to have sizes and temperatures similar to Earth.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We of course can&#8217;t say whether or not these planets have life on them,&rdquo; said Howard, &ldquo;but this is one crucial check in the list of qualities needed for a planet that we think would be like the Earth and could possibly support life.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Now that we found these planets and we&#8217;ve confirmed that they&#8217;re there, the next step is to find out what these planets are made of,&rdquo; said Sinukoff.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers at <abbr>东精影业<\/abbr> and around the world will focus on the most interesting of the newly discovered planets.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;To do this, we are going to use the best telescopes in this world and out of this world, the telescopes on Maunakea, as well as telescopes in space,&rdquo; said Howard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An international team of astronomers including the <abbr title=\"东精影业\"> Manoa Institute for Astronomy and NASA identify 100 new planets including five Earth-like planets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":47874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,35,659,174,9],"class_list":["post-47868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-astronomy","tag-institute-for-astronomy","tag-maunakea","tag-space","tag-uh-manoa","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/manoa-ifa-earthlike-planets-f.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47868"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83960,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47868\/revisions\/83960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}