Berkeley Graduate Student Helps Discover Earth-Size Planets Orbiting Relatively Nearby Star
BERKELEY (CBS SF) -- A graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley has discovered a relatively nearby solar system with three planets that are slightly larger than the size of Earth, and one of the planets has temperatures moderate enough to possibly support life.
According to a statement from UC Berkeley, the exoplanets are orbiting star EPIC 201367065, a star about 150 light years away. The star is also cooler and about half the size and mass of our sun.
Graduate student Erik Petigura found the planets earlier this month when he analyzed data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft. Telescopes at Mount Hamilton, Hawaii and Chile were used to confirm the findings.
The outermost planet is about 1.5 times the size of Earth and is in the so-called "Goldilocks" zone.
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"There is a very real possibility that the outermost planet is rocky like Earth, which means this planet could have the right temperature to support liquid water oceans," Petigura said.
According to Petigura, the next step is to use the Hubble Space Telescope and other telescopes to study the planets' atmospheres.
