Kepler Spacecraft Finds System With Multiple Planets Transiting the Star

rhaas writes "NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star. They found two planets almost the size of Saturn, and possibly a third, small, very hot planet with a radius about 1.5 times that of Earth."

Go a bit further

[aepervius]

Change millenia for million of year. With current tech nearest solar system is 120.000 years away (250 K round trip). That is 4 something light year away. Since such system are likely much further away than 4.7 LY , then count a million years or more round trip. And before somebody serves me on "propulsion system will be better" you have no basis for this. The way the energy generation, and human space transportation are in forseeable future, it ain't even sure we will visit the NEAREST star system, maybe a robotic probe would.

Re:7 month?

[Ihlosi]

Pardon me for asking, but considering our very own planet orbits the sun every 12 months, 23 months on Mars, and something like 130 or 140 for Jupiter, aren't we only starting to scratch the surface in terms of which ones we've seen and which ones just haven't happened to have passed between us and the star since we started looking.

Yes. The longer you look, the more longer-period planets you will find.

On top of that, would an orbit perpendicular to ours be detectible with this technique

Not with this technique, but yes, if the planet is massive enough and close enough to its star, it is possible to detect it by the "wobble" is causes. Also, even if a planet does not transit, it is possible to detect it by observing the radial velocity (i.e. towards/away from the observer) of the parent star by measuring the red shift/blue shift of its light.

However, planets that transit are the most interesting ones right now, because it is possible to detect small planets by this method, as well as analyze their atmospheres by looking at how the spectrum of the parent star changes when the planet transits.