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The Kepler space telescope has shown us our galaxy is teeming with planets — and other surprises

The Kepler space telescope has taught us there are so many planets out there, they outnumber even the stars. Here is a sample of these wondrous, weird and unexpected worlds (and other spectacular objects in space) that Kepler has spotted with its “eye” opened to the heavens.

Kepler has found that double sunsets really do exist.

Yes, Star Wars fans, the double sunset on Tatooine could really exist. Kepler discovered the first known planet around a double-star system, though Kepler-16b is probably a gas giant without a solid surface.

Kepler has gotten us closer to finding planets like Earth.

Nope. Kepler hasn’t found Earth 2.0, and that wasn’t the job it set out to do. But in its survey of hundreds of thousands of stars, Kepler found planets near in size to Earth orbiting at a distance where liquid water could pool on the surface. One of them, Kepler-62f, is about 40 percent bigger than Earth and is likely rocky. Is there life on any of them? We still have a lot more to learn.

This sizzling world is so hot iron would melt!

One of Kepler’s early discoveries was the small, scorched world of Kepler-10b. With a year that lasts less than an Earth day and density high enough to imply it’s probably made of iron and rock, this “lava world” gave us the first solid evidence of a rocky planet outside our solar system.

If it’s not an alien megastructure, what is this oddly fluctuating star?

When Kepler detected the oddly fluctuating light from “Tabby’s Star,” the internet lit up with speculation of an alien megastructure. Astronomers have concluded it’s probably an orbiting dust cloud.

Kepler caught this dead star cannibalizing its planet.

What happens when a solar system dies? Kepler discovered a white dwarf, the compact corpse of a star in the process of vaporizing a planet.

These Kepler planets are more than twice the age of our Sun!

The five small planets in Kepler-444 were born 11 billion years ago when our galaxy was in its youth. Imagine what these ancient planets look like after all that time?

Kepler found a supernova exploding at breakneck speed.

This premier planet hunter has also been watching stars explode. Kepler recorded a sped-up version of a supernova called a “fast-evolving luminescent transit” that reached its peak brightness at breakneck speed. It was caused by a star spewing out a dense shell of gas that lit up when hit with the shockwave from the blast.

* All images are artist illustrations.

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Things That Go Bump in the Gamma Rays

Some people watch scary movies because they like being startled. A bad guy jumps out from around a corner! A monster emerges from the shadows! Scientists experience surprises all the time, but they’re usually more excited than scared. Sometimes theories foreshadow new findings — like when there’s a dramatic swell in the movie soundtrack — but often, discoveries are truly unexpected.

Scientists working with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope have been jumping to study mysterious bumps in the gamma rays for a decade now. Gamma rays are the highest-energy form of light. Invisible to human eyes, they’re created by some of the most powerful and unusual events and objects in the universe. In celebration of Halloween, here are a few spooky gamma-ray findings from Fermi’s catalog.

Stellar Graveyards

If you were to walk through a cemetery at night, you’d expect to trip over headstones or grave markers. Maybe you’d worry about running into a ghost. If you could explore the stellar gravesite created when a star explodes as a supernova, you’d find a cloud of debris expanding into interstellar space. Some of the chemical elements in that debris, like gold and platinum, go on to create new stars and planets! Fermi found that supernova remnants IC 443 and W44 also accelerate mysterious cosmic rays, high-energy particles moving at nearly the speed of light. As the shockwave of the supernova expands, particles escape its magnetic field and interact with non-cosmic-ray particles to produce gamma rays.

Ghost Particles

But the sources of cosmic rays aren’t the only particle mysteries Fermi studies. Just this July, Fermi teamed up with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica to discover the first source of neutrinos outside our galactic neighborhood. Neutrinos are particles that weigh almost nothing and rarely interact with anything. Around a trillion of them pass through you every second, ghost-like, without you noticing and then continue on their way. (But don’t worry, like a friendly ghost, they don’t harm you!) Fermi traced the neutrino IceCube detected back to a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. By the time it reached Earth, it had traveled for 3.7 billion years at almost the speed of light!

Black Widow Pulsars

Black widows and redbacks are species of spiders with a reputation for devouring their partners. Astronomers have discovered two types of star systems that behave in a similar way. Sometimes when a star explodes as a supernova, it collapses back into a rapidly spinning, incredibly dense star called a pulsar. If there’s a lighter star nearby, it can get stuck in a close orbit with the pulsar, which blasts it with gamma rays, magnetic fields and intense winds of energetic particles. All these combine to blow clouds of material off the low-mass star. Eventually, the pulsar can eat away at its companion entirely.

Dark Matter

What’s spookier than a good unsolved mystery? Dark matter is a little-understood substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe. The stuff that we can see — stars, people, haunted houses, candy — is made up of normal matter. But our surveys of the cosmos tell us there’s not enough normal matter to keep things working the way they do. There must be another type of matter out there holding everything together. One of Fermi’s jobs is to help scientists narrow down the search for dark matter. Last year, researchers noticed that most of the gamma rays coming from the Andromeda galaxy are confined to its center instead of being spread throughout. One possible explanation is that accumulated dark matter at the center of the galaxy is emitting gamma rays!

Fermi has helped us learn a lot about the gamma-ray universe over the last 10 years. Learn more about its accomplishments and the other mysteries it’s working to solve. What other surprises are waiting out among the stars?

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tomhiddletson

she’s beauty she’s grace she’s in love with aliens and space

40screamingfrogs

she’s gorgeous, she’s seductive; she wants to be abducted

1st-1

she’s intelligent - she’s priceless, she’s having an extraterrestrial crisis

futureperfectjohn

she’s brilliant, she’s wise; she’s an alien in disguise

latinaballerina27

She’s mischievous and smart, that alien has my heart

mrmadhatter

She’s wild, she’s free, she’s the only alien for me

amazing-ghost-cookie

She’s the moon, she’s the stars, all she wants is to live on Mars

1st-1

She’s bold, she’s hip, she wants to ride in a rocket ship

zenxenophilia

She’s cool, she’s hot, she’s a genuine, bonafide astronaut

lilkittynellie-deactivated20240

She’s near, she’s far, she shines brighter than the stars

warios-worl

she’s here, she’s there, she’s a galactic extraordinaire

1st-1

she’s smart, she’s kind, she’s the alien on my mind

nyyxbby

she’s a blessing, she’s a curse, but damn she’s my universe

yesterdaysprint

Green Bay Press-Gazette, Wisconsin, December 19, 1946

yesterdaysprint

Green Bay Press-Gazette, Wisconsin, December 19, 1946

1st-1

And after the earth dies, some 5 billion years from now, after it’s burned to a crisp, or even swallowed by the Sun, there will be other worlds and stars and galaxies coming into being – and they will know nothing of a place once called Earth.

–Carl Sagan.