University of Texas-led Team Discovers Unusual Multi-Planet System with NASA's Kepler Spacecraft

A team of researchers led by Bill Cochran, senior research scientist with the University of Texas at Austin McDonald Observatory and co-investigator on NASA's Kepler Mission, used data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft to discover an unusual multiple-planet system containing a super-Earth and two Neptune-sized planets orbiting in resonance with each other. The findings were announced today in Nantes, France, at a joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division of Planetary Science and the European Planetary Science Conference. The research will be published in a special Kepler issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series in November.

Image Credit: Tim Jones/McDonald Obs./UT-Austin

For more information visit http://mcdonaldobservatory.org/news/releases/2011/1004.html .