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Discovery Alert! Two new planets – found by AI

Planets: K2-293b, K2-294b

Discovered by: Dattilo et al. using NASA's Kepler space telescope and a neural network, AstroNet-K2

Date: March 2019

Key Facts: Two new "super Earths" – planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune – were discovered using artificial intelligence.

Two new "super Earths" – planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, about which little is known – were discovered using a machine-learning algorithm.

Details: The new planets are called K2-293b and K2-294b. The first is about 2.5 times as big around as Earth, the second about 1.7 times. K2-293b orbits a star about 1,300 light years away, K2-294b orbits a star a little over 1,200 light years distant.

What’s new: The planets were spotted by a machine-learning algorithm called AstroNet-K2, a neural network modified to hunt through data from the Kepler space telescope's K2 campaign. The "deep learning" algorithm is able to separate real exoplanet signals from false positives.

Read the paper: Identifying Exoplanets with Deep Learning II: Two New Super-Earths Uncovered by a Neural Network in K2 Data