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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

'We are a universe crowded with life': NASA astronomers discover ANOTHER blue planet... but this time it's habitable

Astronomers have discovered the first habitable blue planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star similar to the Sun.

NASA’s Kepler Mission has been finding new worlds at an incredible rate over the past year but this is the first discovery of what could be a habitable super-earth as it appears to be large, rocky planet with a surface temperature of about 72 degrees Fahrenheit, similar to spring day on Earth.

A team of researchers, including Carnegie Institute's Alan Boss, made the discovery which will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Discovery: An artist's impression of the planet Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star

Discovery: An artist's impression of the planet Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star

The discovery team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, used photometric data from the NASA Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2070388/Exoplanet-Kepler-22b-NASA-Kepler-Mission-finds-habitable-blue-planet.html

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