NASA finds 5 Earth-sized planets in "Goldilocks" zone

If you read the announcement that 68 planets the size of Earth had been discovered, and also that 54 "habitable zone" planets had been found, you were probably wondering how many were BOTH similar in size to Earth and in a habitable or Goldilocks (not too hot, not too cold) orbit.

Here's the answer, courtesy of SpaceDaily.com:

"We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone - a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Some candidates could even have moons with liquid water," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the Kepler Mission's science principal investigator.

"Five of the planetary candidates are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars."

The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size - up to twice the size of Earth - to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009 of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting stars like our sun in our galaxy," said Borucki.



Full SpaceDaily.com article on NASA'a Kepler discoveries, by by Michael Mewhinney and Rachel Hoover