Kepler Discovers First Earth-Sized Planets Outside Solar System (2011)

2011 · Short film · 1 min

Watch now On the Internet Archive

Synopsis

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun. Kepler-20e is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring 0.87 times the radius of Earth. Kepler-20f is slightly larger than Earth, measuring 1.03 times its radius. Both planets reside in a five-planet system called Kepler-20, approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. Kepler-20e orbits its parent star every 6.1 days and Kepler-20f every 19.6 days. These short orbital periods mean very hot, inhospitable worlds. Kepler-20f, at 800 degrees Fahrenheit, is similar to an average day on the planet Mercury. The surface temperature of Kepler-20e, at more than 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit, would melt glass.

Uploader's description on archive.org

Details

Running time

1 minutes

Collection

NASA

Subjects on the Internet Archive

• ames
• nasa ames
• kepler
• space
• telescope
• kepler20
• kepler20e
• kepler20f
• exoplanet
• planet

More like this

• Kepler: The Search for Earth-Size Planets Begins (2011)
• NASA'S Kepler Mission Discovers Its First Rocky Planet (2011)
• NASA's Kepler Mission Discovery Summary, Dec (2011)
• Destination Innovation - Kepler (2012)
• Kepler's 1 Year Anniversary Celebration (2010)
• NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Kepler-16b, A Planet Orbiting Two Suns (2011)
• ScienceCasts: Getting to Know the Goldilocks Planet (2012)
• The NASA Hyper-G Competion (2010)
• Perimeter Taxiways at DFW (2010)
• NASA Ames and the Traveling Space Museum (2010)