Via the @SETIInstitute, I'm thrilled to be a part of this discovery of #Kepler-1649 c, an Earth-sized #exoplanet in the Habitable Zone of a nearby M-dwarf star!

https://seti.org/dedicated-team-scientists-discover-habitable-zone-earth-size-planet-kepler-data

Let’s look at the incredible amount of people involved in finding it. (1/7)

Kudos to Bill Borucki and team for proposing the #KeplerMission. Kudos to @NASAAmes, @BallAerospace, and @LASPatCU for getting every bit of data from Kepler, and to the #NASA archives @MAST_News and @NASAExoArchive for organizing and making those bits accessible. (2/7)

Kudos to the @KeplerGO team for soliciting community targets, and to guest observer Rosanne Di Stefano for selecting the star. Kudos to Jon Jenkins ( @Jonmjenkins) and team for building a pipeline sensitive enough to detect it as a TCE in the final (DR25) planet search. (3/7)

Kudos to Susan Mullally ( @mustaric) and team for building a catalog that designated it a DR25 KOI (even if the Robovetter just barely called it a False Positive). Kudos to Steve Bryson for leadership of the Kepler False Positive Working Group (FPWG) over many, many years. (4/7)

Kudos to everyone on the FPWG for manually vetting thousands of KOIs, especially Pam Rowden, who was the most prolific vetter of DR25 KOIs, and was the first to notice this planet and bring it for group review. (5/7)

Kudos to Isabel Angelo ( @IsabelNAngelo) and team, including Jason Rowe ( @JasonFRowe), for confirming Kepler-1649 b almost exactly 3 years prior, the Venus-like planet in the system, and their observations which helped confirm Kepler-1649 c. (6/7)

https://www.seti.org/press-release/possible-venus-twin-discovered-around-dim-star

Kudos to Andrew Vanderburg for detailed analysis of Kepler-1649 c and leading the paper confirming it. And kudos to absolutely everyone involved with #Kepler over the years! If we found this 11 years after launch, who knows what else remains to be found in the data... (7/7)