Kepler, which is designed to detect Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars has just discovered a complete solar system. This solar system consists of a sun-like star with six planets orbiting it. Five of the six planets actually orbit around this star closer than Mercury does to our own sun! Although these planets that have been found are not very much like Earth, and they're too close to the sun causing them to get too hot to sustain life this discovery with Kepler is very promising to finding more planets orbiting stars. Hopefully we'll find one that is more Earth-like in the near future.
The star is called Kepler-11. With it's mass, age, size and even temperature close to our own sun. Kepler-11 is about 2000 light years away. The six planets, simply named Kepler-11 b, c, d, e, f, and g (in order of closest to furthest from star) have been detected using the transit method. This method basically means that the planets orbit the star and when they pass in front of it, from Keplers perspective, they block a little bit of light. Kepler works off of finding these light dips/curves so the images seen with Kepler is nothing in comparison to the Hubble's beautiful images.
These 6 planets are a mixture of gases and rock, possibly including water. All of the planets are larger than Earth with the largest being comparable to the size of Uranus. The inner five are about ten times closer to it's star than Earth is to the sun, and the furthest planet is about half as far from it's star as Earth is from the sun. The five closest planets are very close together in orbit that they interact with eachothers gravity. This play with eachothers gravity affects the orbits slightly which also affects the transits. The inner five planets have periods from 10-46 days.
According to NASA, when looking for the best candidate for the next Earth-like planet it must orbit the star three times (three transits) for verification that it is orbiting the star. It's expected to take three years to find and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars. After spotting planetary candidates the Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations.
To read more about the Kepler mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/kepler and of course visit NASA.gov for any other space information you could possibly need.
As far as I'm concerned, although these planets are not habitable the search and discovery of these and many others are extremely interesting. We humans have come a long way in such a short amount of time in discovering new planets, whether they're Earth-like or big gas giants like Jupiter and Uranus. Who knows when and where the next Earth will be found? With these kinds of discoveries being made we can look into the night sky and consider the fact that there might be another Earth out there. Realistically and scientifically this is quickly going from science fiction to actual science!
Decided to edit with this picture to give you an example of what Kepler-11 and it's planets look like in comparison to Mercury and Venus' orbit around our own sun.
Illustration Credit: Tim Pyle, NASA
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