Breakthrough Listen: Kepler-160

Overview - Kepler-160

The Breakthrough Listen team conducted a search for artificial radio emission in the direction of the Kepler-160 system, following a report announcing the discovery of an Earth-like planet candidate, KOI-456.04, by Heller et al. (2020). This planet candidate has a radius almost twice that of Earth's, orbits its Sun-like star in 378 days, and is in the system's habitable zone (which means it has the potential of hosting liquid water on its surface and could therefore possibly support life). We analyzed data from observations conducted on June 14, 2020 using the Green Bank Telescope to search for radio emission indicative of a technological origin (technosignatures). No technosignature candidates were found in our three 30-min observations covering radio frequencies from 1 to 8 GHz. We also did not find any optical technosignature candidates in a search of archival data from the Keck Observatory.


The paper is available: Breakthrough Listen Search for Technosignatures Towards the Kepler-160 System


The data from these observations can be found in The Breakthrough Listen Open Data Archive (or via the Berkeley SETI beta Open Data Portal and searching for "Kepler-160").

Background Image by T. Pyle/NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech