# NASA just announced 715 new exoplanets were discovered, what do we know about them?

I have been trying to find information on how far away these new exoplanets are from Sol. Does anybody have a map or a table that shows their distance to us in light years.

There only seem to be 100 of them that are Earth-sized, do we know how many of these are in the habitable zone?

## 2 Answers

Here's yesterday's media briefing (audio stream) that explains what this announcement is all about, on top of already linked to news article. Many other links are available on Kepler Planet Bonanza press kit, including presentation slides (PDF, 27MB warning!).

The table of confirmed planets is published on Kepler pages, including planet characteristics, their orbits and caracteristics of their stars. It also includes further links:

One thing to add, in case it isn't obvious to some, is that most of these exoplanets are far too distant to us to attempt any direct imaging, so they're detected as they transit in front of the star they orbit and the intensity of detected light emitted from it temporarily drops. Knowing duration, intensity and periodicity of these dips, we can deduct the candidate planet's orbital period (distance to star and velocity), inclination, eccentricity, and other orbital elements, and through known characteristics of the star they orbit also their size, mass and surface temperature estimates. This is relatively easy and reliable with quiet stars, but a fair bit trickier with stars with irregular activity patterns.

Other links of interest:

• Hmm. I don't see any distances from Sol listed. Am I missing it or do they not say? – Maelish Feb 27 '14 at 21:09
• @Maelish They're listed in parsecs in the gray Distance column between Planetary Orbit and Stellar Characteristics columns. For reference, $1 pc = 2.0626\cdot 10^5\ AU = 3.26156\ ly$. Some values are not yet entered and matching with parent database is still required. For more information on parent/host star properties, click on the Kepler planet name or the KOI (Kepler Object of Interest) number. For example, in NASA Exoplanet Archive, these are listed under Related Overviews / Host links. – TildalWave Feb 28 '14 at 1:28

There is a list of confirmed planets, but this does not identify which planets were confirmed by the Lissauer and Rowe teams. Their papers (Lissauer, Rowe (large PDFs)) don't identify all of the planets they've confirmed.
This presentation (pdf) says that 4 planets are in the habitable zone.