The Most Earth-Like Exoplanets we've discovered (1)

A new catalog of Kepler exoplanets in Habitable Zone of their star.

NASA Kepler mission discovered thousands of new exoplanets. The main goal of the mission is to determine the terrestrial-size planets within the Habitable Zone (HZ) of their host stars.

Above, a chart of some exoplanets near the Habitable Zone (click to enlarge).   Credit Chester Harman, via PhysOrg

Here is a list of HZ exoplanet candidates from the Kepler Data Release 24 Q1-Q17 data vetting process. This work was undertaken as part of the Kepler Habitable Zone Working Group.

“We use a variety of criteria regarding HZ boundaries and planetary sizes to produce complete lists of HZ candidates, including a catalog of 104 candidates within the optimistic HZ and 20 candidates with radii less than two Earth radii within the conservative HZ.”

Take a look at the paper in the Astrophysical Journal (PDF)