U.S. space agency discovers multiple planets orbiting stars

THE United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two stars for the first time.The system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.Meanwhile, NASA's Administrator Charles Bolden and other dignitaries will attend a public memorial service at the Washington National Cathedral to honour the life and career of astronaut Neil Armstrong on September 13.The memorial will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed online by the agency's and National Cathedral's websites.NASA said that coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, the discovery has proven that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star. The discovery, it added, 'demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.'Astronomers detected two planets in the Kepler-47 system, a pair of orbiting stars that eclipse each other every 7.5 days from our vantage point on Earth. One star is similar to the sun in size, but only 84 per cent as bright. The second star is diminutive, measuring only one-third the size of the sun and less than 1 percent as bright.
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