a pair of planets in the "water zone" around a Sun-like star

[Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]]

The Kepler team has just announced the discovery of a pair of planets
(each ~2 times Earth's size) orbiting in the "water zone" of a solar-type
star. There have been a lot of press stories, e.g.,

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/science/space/2-new-planets-are-most-earth-like-yet-scientists-say.html?hpw
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/04/18/earth_sized_planets_two_super_earths_found_orbiting_the_same_star.html

and now the scientific papers have appeared as well:

Thomas Barclay et al. 2013 ApJ 768, 101
doi: 10.1088/0004-637X/768/2/101
"A super-Earth-sized planet orbiting in or near the habitable zone
around a Sun-like star"
http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4941
http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/768/2/101

Abstract from arXiv:

We present the discovery of a super-earth-sized planet in or near
the habitable zone of a sun-like star. The host is Kepler-69, a
13.7 mag G4V-type star. We detect two periodic sets of transit
signals in the three-year flux time series of Kepler-69, obtained
with the Kepler spacecraft. Using the very high precision Kepler
photometry, and follow-up observations, our confidence that these
signals represent planetary transits is >99.1%. The inner planet,
Kepler-69b, has a radius of 2.24+/-0.4 Rearth and orbits the host
star every 13.7 days. The outer planet, Kepler-69c, is a super-Earth-size
object with a radius of 1.7+/-0.3 Rearth and an orbital period of
242.5 days. Assuming an Earth-like Bond albedo, Kepler-69c has an
equilibrium temperature of 299 +/- 19 K, which places the planet
close to the habitable zone around the host star. This is the
smallest planet found by Kepler to be orbiting in or near habitable
zone of a Sun-like star and represents an important step on the
path to finding the first true Earth analog.

I've just skimmed the paper, but so far the analysis to (very likely)
exclude false positives looks quite impressive.

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jth...@astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
on sabbatical in Canada starting August 2012
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam