00:00 So far, astronomers have discovered 5,535 exoplanets, or planets that don't reside,
00:10 in our solar system.
00:11 However, that number has now just ticked up again, after researchers noticed some new
00:15 ones tucked away in old Kepler mission data.
00:17 The Kepler mission ended its nine-year mission of planet searching way back in 2018, but
00:22 there was so much cosmic information included, researchers are still pouring through it today.
00:26 And among that data, in a star system 4,670 light years away called Kepler-385, they just
00:33 found 7 new ones.
00:34 A couple of the planets were already confirmed during the Kepler mission proper back in 2014,
00:39 however the rest have now been confirmed as well.
00:41 Kepler-385 is of interest to astronomers because of its similarity to our own system.
00:46 First, its central star is only 10% larger and 5% hotter than our own.
00:51 It's also one of the few planetary systems that has more than 6 orbiting planets, just
00:55 like ours which has 8.
00:56 Many of the planets in Kepler-385 are also rocky, including its innermost two, which
01:01 are also only a little bit bigger than Earth.
01:03 Still, that doesn't mean any of those planets are habitable.
01:06 All seven of them receive more heat from their central star than any single one in our system,
01:11 including Mercury.
01:12 [music]
Comments