


1382364 galaxy landscape



This discovery is important in the search for habitable worlds because it demonstrates that the Kepler telescope is sensitive enough to find Earth-sized planets with longer orbits. Kepler 37b has also allowed scientists to study the architecture of other star systems at the low range for the first time, and revolutionized astronomers' notions of our galaxy as a place that must be teeming with rocky planets.

Even with all of the state-of-the-art technology used at the Kepler Observatory, finding a planet is tricky. If a planet orbits a star, and the orbit of the planet aligns just right, we can see the light from the star dim slightly as the planet passes directly in front of the star. The real trick though, is figuring out the size of the planet.

NASA currently uses a process called asteroseismology to figure out how big a star is. However, the discovery of asteroseismology was not funded by NASA—it was funded by the public! A nonprofit called White Dwarf started the Pale Blue Dot project to raise money for research. They let people “adopt” a Kepler star for a $10 donation and used that money to help researchers. They ended up raising tens of thousands of dollars that funded the asteroseismology used to measure Kepler-37b. This just goes to show, when you put the power of cooperation behind the power of science, you get record-breaking results!

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