Galactic Getaways.

“‘It feels like we’re living in the future, or science fiction is coming to life. We thought it would be really cool to explore the characteristics of each planet through the context of travel.'” As Kepler finds its 1,000th exoplanet, NASA celebrates by commissioning nifty vintage travel posters for faraway worlds. Either of the above might be good for a swing-through while folding space to Arrakis.

Frost/Kepler.

“The planet is located about 110 million miles (177 million km) from its sun, a type K star that’s dimmer and cooler than ours…It’s located in an area crucial for the formation of planets, the so-called frost line. This is the special distance where the temperature is cold enough for ice grains to form. Any closer to the host star and these grains would be boiled off. But at or beyond the frost line, these ice grains can stick together and form planetary embryos which go on to form gas giants.”

For the first time, Kepler discovers an exoplanet near the frost line, which may help us better understand the formation of worlds. “[The frost line] explains why our gas giants are rich in ice and water, any why the rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) began their existence as very dry worlds; water only arrived later via comets.”

A World of Worlds.

“‘This is the largest windfall of planets — not exoplanet candidates, mind you, but actually validated exoplanets — that’s ever been announced at one time,’ Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist at NASA’s Astrophysics Division in Washington, told reporters today.”

NASA announces 715 new planets found by the Kepler telescope, and that’s only from the first two years of data. “About 94 percent of the new alien worlds are smaller than Neptune, researchers said, further bolstering earlier Kepler observations that suggested the Milky Way galaxy abounds with rocky planets like Earth…four of the worlds are less than 2.5 times the size of Earth and reside in the ‘habitable zone,’ that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist on their surfaces.”