Alien Planets Around Distant Stars Found by Small Telescope Think of it as a win for the little guys. Astronomers using a small ground-based telescope have discovered two unusual alien planets around extremely bright, distant stars. The two extrasolar planets are gas giant worlds detected using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) in southern Arizona, which has a lens that is roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera, the researchers said. “KELT is slightly more diminutive than Kepler, but we like to think it’s small but fierce,” said Thomas Beatty, a doctoral student at Ohio State University in Columbus. NASA’s Kepler space telescope is an orbiting observatory specially built to seek out distant planets.

Alien Planets Around Distant Stars Found by Small Telescope

Think of it as a win for the little guys. Astronomers using a small ground-based telescope have discovered two unusual alien planets around extremely bright, distant stars.

The two extrasolar planets are gas giant worlds detected using the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) in southern Arizona, which has a lens that is roughly as powerful as a high-end digital camera, the researchers said.

“KELT is slightly more diminutive than Kepler, but we like to think it’s small but fierce,” said Thomas Beatty, a doctoral student at Ohio State University in Columbus. NASA’s Kepler space telescope is an orbiting observatory specially built to seek out distant planets.