Kepler Exoplanet Necklace

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered if we are alone in the universe? For eons humans have imagined what or who is out there. They even created elaborate stories making the stars the home of mythical creatures and gods.After hundreds of years of astronomical research, in 1992 astronomers finally had the data to confirm the existence of planets existing beyond our solar system. Now we know of thousands of exoplanets across our galaxy! In 2009 the Kepler Space Telescope launched with the mission of discovering Earth-sized exoplanets. For nine and a half years it gathered light from an area near the constellations Cygnus, Lyra, and Draco. By analyzing the data and looking for planetary transits (when a planet passes in front of another object), astronomers discovered over 5,000 exoplanets of all types and sizes, with another couple thousand suspected candidates yet to be confirmed.To showcase in jewelry the incredible research happening in this area, we worked with two ex