Since near about nine years after its launch, the Kepler Space Telescope has successfully performed in confirming to the world around “1,300 exoplanets” as of the year 2017. The Kepler has helped the space agency NASA since the year 2009 in estimating details regarding the worlds far off our Earth. However, according to a new research, the Kepler might not be hundred percent accurate in confirming the planets or might be providing false positives.
A new study featured in the popular Astronomical Journal in the current month brought to the knowledge of the researchers as to how the astronomers analyze if the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered an exoplanet. In accordance with the published journal, the astronomers cross-check the data provided by the Kepler Space Telescope with the help of a 2nd telescope to confirm if actually, Kepler has discovered an exoplanet after identifying “a dip in brightness.” As per the experts, in certain possible cases the “dip in brightness” was brought about by some other object in space that resulted in the illumination from the stars to faint.
Further information received from the reports said that the astronomers altered their techniques used to confirm the possible exoplanets identified by the space telescope as Kepler began to identify an increasing number of potential leads. It was further heard from the new study that the Kepler identified the exoplanets in so much abundance that NASA failed to keep track and cross-check the findings individually. For that reason, the scientists at the space agency rather started making use of another method. As a part of the new method, the researchers made use of some mathematical formulas to analyze how true the discovery of the Kepler Space Telescope was. With the help of the new technique, the researchers started confirming if the reports provided by Kepler were at least ninety-nine percent true.
As per the researchers who worked at the study, the issue with the undertaken new method was that the mathematical formulas of the space agency do not take into account the errors and/or inconsistencies of the reading instruments. The study even said that the errors are more likely at the time when the space agency is formulating techniques to confirm the exoplanets that are similar in size to our planet or located at a similar distance from their parent star as that of our Earth.
Fergal Mullally, who worked as a member of the group for NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope said that the real science was never rubbish, in fact, it is only that the researchers have got to know much of the imperfections of the telescope. He further added that Kepler was wonderful equipment but nothing that it provided was precise.
Source – Tecake
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