The astronomy article, Stellar oddballs, describes the life of a telescope named Kepler. Kepler, named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, was sent out in the hopes of discovering new planets in March 2009. Since then, a large amount of data has been sent back, and astronomers from all over the world have gone to Kepler's data to see what they can find. Kepler has discovered over 1,200 possible exoplanets, 15 of which are confirmed. However, Kepler has been helpful in more things other than discovering planets. Throughout it's years orbiting the Sun, Kepler has discovered many oddities that had not been seen before. It discovered stars with unusual brightness variations, stars located so closely to each other that they contain streams of magma streaming between them, collapsed white dwarfs orbiting around larger, younger red dwarfs, and many more bizarre sites. Kepler has brought back information stunning astronomers, and nothing tells what more can be discovered int he next few years.
Experiments with Kepler are discovery science. This is so because scientists use data sent from the telescope to find out what it is that they discovered. Discoveries from Kepler can get people one step closer to discovering planets like Earth in the Universe.
Author: Charles Petit
Title: Stellar Oddballs
Journal: Science News
Published: June 4, 2011
1 comment:
Very good to add a hyperlink to your analysis.
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