New Year, New Worlds

As the New Year begins many of us are turning our thoughts to exploring New Worlds. January has always been a time to get excited about doing new things and going to new places, whether it be signing up for a dance class or booking a round the world ticket, its the time to take a risk and try something new.

And it turns out that this exploring of New Worlds has been happening on an even bigger scale as NASA have had a massive discovery of their own. Announced yesterday in Washington, Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope has detected its first five exoplanets, or planets beyond our Solar System. from the bbc.

The observatory, which was launched last year to find other Earths, made the discoveries in its first few weeks of science operations.

Although the new worlds are all bigger than our Neptune, the US space agency says the haul shows the telescope is working well and is very sensitive.

The exoplanets have been given the names Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b.

They were announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington DC.

The planets range in size from an object that has a radius four times that of Earth, to worlds much bigger than even our Jupiter.

And they all circle very close to their parent stars, following orbits that range from about 3.2 to 4.9 days.

This proximity and the fact that the host stars are themselves much hotter than our Sun means Kepler's new exoplanets experience an intense roasting.

Read the full article on the BBC

Read more about the Kepler Space Telescope from NASA

Want to discover your a new world right here on Earth? Find out about volunteering with Quest4Change this year.