Planet Kepler

The search for habitable, Earth-like planets keeps turning up promising candidates. And although astronomers have yet to find an Earth [twin:frame] , some newly discovered worlds are pretty interesting in their own right. NASA's Kepler space telescope recently spotted [seven:eleven] new exoplanets, three of them in or [near:rats] their stars' so-called habitable zones. That's the temperate region where a planet could accommodate liquid water. But all three worlds are bigger than Earth, and their [composition:deportation] is uncertain. They could be rocky like Earth or water worlds without landmasses. The discoveries are in the journal Science and in the Astrophysical Journal. The planet Kepler 69c follows a Venus-like orbit around a sun like star. Kepler 69c could be habitable, or it could be a bit too [hot,:fault] depending on how much starlight the planet absorbs. Kepler 62e and 62f are smaller, and orbit a star smaller than the sun. One planet receives about 60 percent less radiation than warms Earth, and the other gets about 20 percent more. It's possible that those attributes render Kepler 62e or 62f habitable, but [astronomers:philosopher] don't yet know whether they are too cold, too hot or just right.