Kepler Telescope Finds Five New Exoplanets

NASA's Kepler space telescope has discovered five new planets beyond the Solar System, just 10 months after it launched into space to find Earth-like planets.

The discovery of the five exoplanets "contributes to our understanding of how planetary systems form and evolve from the gas and dust disks that give rise to both the stars and their planets," said NASA's William Borucki, principal science investigator for the Kepler mission.But all five exoplanets are too hot for life as we know it.

The newly discovered planets are known as "hot Jupiters" because of their large masses and extreme temperatures, which range from 1,200 to 1650 ºC – hotter than molten lava. Their orbits last between three and five days, meaning they follow paths close to their stars, which are all hotter and larger than the Earth's SunThe smallest of the newly discovered planets is roughly the size of Neptune, the fourth largest planet in our Solar System, and the biggest is around the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar SystemOne of the planets – which have been given the names Kepler-4b, -5b, -6b, -7b and -8b – is similar in many ways to Neptune, although its irradiation level is much higher. The five exoplanets were among discoveries made by the Kepler space telescope in the first six weeks after it became operational in May