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'NASA's Kepler Space Telescope may find habitable moons'.


Byline: ANI

London, Sep. 13 (ANI): There are thousands of habitable habitable adj. referring to a residence that is safe and can be occupied in reasonable comfort. Although standards vary by region, the premises should be closed in against the weather, provide running water, access to decent toilets and bathing facilities, heating,  moons orbiting planets in other solar systems trillions of miles from our own, British scientists say.

On the basis of mathematical calculations, scientists at the University College London “UCL” redirects here. For other uses, see UCL (disambiguation).
University College London, commonly known as UCL, is the oldest multi-faculty constituent college of the University of London, one of the two original founding colleges, and the first British
 have said that it should be possible to spot these moons using a space telescope launched by NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
NASA
 in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Independent U.S.
.

Dr David Kipping from the department of physics and astronomy will tell a conference on the search for habitable planets that the first habitable moons could be spotted within the next five years, The Telegraph reports.

According to him, there are more than 12,500 stars within sight of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope which have possibility of having habitable moons orbiting around them.

Kipping's team has devised a new method for detecting moons in other solar systems - known as exomoons.

"For the first time, we have demonstrated that potentially-habitable moons up to hundreds of light years away may be detected with current instrumentation.

"As we ran the simulations, even we were surprised that moons as small as one-fifth of the Earth's mass could be spotted. "It seems probable that many thousands, possibly millions, of habitable exomoons exist in the Galaxy and now we can start to look for them," he said.

Around 370 exoplanets have now been discovered, but most are giant gas planets similar to Jupiter and unlikely to harbour life.

Earlier this year astronomers announced the discovery of an exoplanet exoplanet  

See extrasolar planet.
 known as Gliese 581 d Gliese 581 d is an extrasolar planet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 581. Due to its mass it can be categorized as a Super-earth.

Gliese 581 d is near the outer edge of the habitable zone.
, which is 20 light years away and eight times the size of the Earth, and is now seen as the best contender to be habitable. (ANI)

Copyright 2009 Asian News International The Asian News International (ANI) agency provides multimedia news to China and 50 bureaus in India. It covers virtually all of South Asia since its foundation and presently claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency.  (ANI) - All Rights Reserved.

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Publication:Asian News International
Date:Sep 13, 2009
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