Almost like home: Astronomers find Earth-like planets

Washington, Apr 19: There may be no place like home, but a NASA survey has found three planets that may come close. The Kepler planet-hunting satellite has pinpointed three so-called “super-Earth” sized planets orbiting their stars at a distance that could support water and therefore life. Two of the planets seem ideal for life, and could even contain water or be completely covered in oceans, a separate study published in the journal Science said. The planets, known as Kepler-62e, 62f and 69c, are part of systems orbiting two different stars, one with five planets and the other two. Kepler-62f is the planet closest in size to Earth, only 40 per cent larger than our planet, and could be rocky, NASA said. Its companion planet 62e is 60 per cent larger than Earth. They orbit a star that is cooler and smaller than the sun. The third planet 69c orbits another star and is 70 per cent larger than the Earth and orbits a star similar to the Sun. The Kepler space telescope launched in 2009 is finely tuned enough to detect Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. The 590-million-dollar telescope programme is scanning a large swath of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains about 4.5 million stars. The most advanced cameras ever used in space are focussing on 100,000 to 150,000 stars deemed most likely to have orbiting planets. Data from the cameras are used to find planets by looking for distortions in the light emitted as an orbiting planet crosses in front of the star.