Related papers: A Potential Super-Venus in the Kepler-69 System
We present the discovery of a super-earth-sized planet in or near the habitable zone of a sun-like star. The host is Kepler-69, a 13.7 mag G4V-type star. We detect two periodic sets of transit signals in the three-year flux time series of…
The Kepler mission has revealed that Earth-sized planets are common, and dozens have been discovered to orbit in or near their host star's habitable zone. A major focus in astronomy is to determine which of these exoplanets are likely to…
The field of exoplanetary science has seen a dramatic improvement in sensitivity to terrestrial planets over recent years. Such discoveries have been a key feature of results from the {\it Kepler} mission which utilizes the transit method…
Exoplanet habitability is traditionally assessed by comparing a planet's semi-major axis to the location of its host star's "habitable zone," the shell around a star for which Earth-like planets can possess liquid surface water. The Kepler…
The planetary mass and radius sensitivity of exoplanet discovery capabilities has reached into the terrestrial regime. The focus of such investigations is to search within the Habitable Zone where a modern Earth-like atmosphere may be a…
We report on the discovery and validation of Kepler-452b, a transiting planet identified by a search through the 4 years of data collected by NASA's Kepler Mission. This possibly rocky 1.63$^{+0.23}_{-0.20}$ R$_\oplus$ planet orbits its G2…
The quest for Earth-like planets represents a major focus of current exoplanet research. While planets that are Earth-sized and smaller have been detected, these planets reside in orbits that are too close to their host star to allow liquid…
We report the discovery of an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a low-mass star called Kepler-1649. The planet, Kepler-1649 c, is 1.06$^{+0.15}_{-0.10}$ times the size of Earth and transits its 0.1977 +/- 0.0051 Msun mid M-dwarf…
The Kepler mission found hundreds of planet candidates within the habitable zones (HZ) of their host star, including over 70 candidates with radii larger than 3 Earth radii ($R_\oplus$) within the optimistic habitable zone (OHZ) (Kane et…
Understanding the occurrence of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars is essential to the search for Earth analogues. Yet a lack of reliable Kepler detections for such planets has forced many estimates to be derived…
Data from Kepler's first 136 days of operation are analyzed to determine the distribution of exoplanets with respect to radius, period, and host-star spectral type. The analysis is extrapolated to estimate the percentage of terrestrial,…
The Kepler Mission is exploring the diversity of planets and planetary systems. Its legacy will be a catalog of discoveries sufficient for computing planet occurrence rates as a function of size, orbital period, star-type, and insolation…
Kepler-22b is the first transiting planet to have been detected in the habitable-zone of its host star. At 2.4 Earth radii, Kepler-22b is too large to be considered an Earth-analog, but should the planet host a moon large enough to maintain…
An analysis of the currently known exoplanets in the habitable zones (HZs) of their host stars is of interest in both the wake of the NASA Kepler mission and with prospects for expanding the known planet population through future ground-…
We report a detailed characterization of the Kepler-19 system. This star was previously known to host a transiting planet with a period of 9.29 days, a radius of 2.2 R$_\oplus$ and an upper limit on the mass of 20 M$_\oplus$. The presence…
The recent discovery of a staggering diversity of planets beyond the Solar System has brought with it a greatly expanded search space for habitable worlds. The Kepler exoplanet survey has revealed that most planets in our interstellar…
We present an improved estimate of the occurrence rate of small planets orbiting small stars by searching the full four-year Kepler data set for transiting planets using our own planet detection pipeline and conducting transit injection and…
The population of planets smaller than approximately $1.7~R_\oplus$ is widely interpreted as consisting of rocky worlds, generally referred to as super-Earths. This picture is largely corroborated by radial-velocity (RV) mass measurements…
The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of their population. This large, homogeneous catalog of discoveries has enabled rigorous studies of the occurrence rate of exoplanets and…
Here, we evaluate our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, as an exemplar of the runaway greenhouse state that bounds the inner edge of the habitable zone. Despite its current hellish surface environment, Venus may once have been habitable…