Yesterday, Kepler released data on the 400 most promising and interesting candidate planets and today announced their discoveries. Kepler has now found 1,235 planet candidates, ranging in size from about Earth-sized to larger than Jupiter.
Dozens of the transiting exoplanets discovered to date have radii that are significantly larger than expected, leading astronomers to refer to them as puffy or inflated. Although tidal heating has had some success modeling puffy planets, these authors continue work on a new mechanism which employs planetary magnetic fields.
Today the discovery of the first definitely rocky exoplanet — as well as the smallest planet discovered to date — was announced. The Kepler 10b press release was made this morning by Dr. Natalie Batalha at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Seattle.