Kepler was not designed to find planets using microlensing, nor to study the extremely dense star fields of the inner Galaxy. However, the four shortest events are new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth.Ī simulation of the gravitational microlensing effect induced by a foreground isolated planetaryīody on the light from a background star located towards the centre of the Milky Way galaxy Many of these had been previously seen in data obtained simultaneously from the ground.
The study team found 27 short-duration candidate microlensing signals that varied over timescales of between an hour and 10 days. During this two-month campaign, Kepler monitored a crowded field of millions of stars near the centre of our Galaxy every 30 minutes in order to find rare gravitational microlensing events. The study, led by Iain McDonald of the University of Manchester, UK, (now based at the Open University, UK) used data obtained in 2016 during the K2 mission phase of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The results include four new discoveries that are consistent with planets of similar masses to Earth, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Īrtist’s impression of a free-floating planet Tantalising evidence has been uncovered for a mysterious population of “free-floating” planets, planets that may be alone in deep space, unbound to any host star.
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