An international team of astronomers has discovered a potentially habitable exoplanet which is more similar to Earth in size and orbit than any planet found before.
Dubbed KOI-456.04, the planet is located just over 3,000 light-years away from the solar system orbiting its parent star, named Kepler-160, close enough there could even be liquid water on the planet’s surface.
“KOI-456.04 sits in a region of the stellar habitable zone — the distance range around a star admitting liquid surface water on an Earth-like planet — that is comparable to the Earth’s position around the Sun,”said the scientists in a statement.
Kepler-160, is G-type main-sequence star (G2V) — like our sun — sits 3,000 light years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. It has a surface temperature of 5,200 °C and a very Sun-like luminosity, mass and radius — it is an astrophysical portrayal of our parent star. Kepler-160 is accompanied by three or even four exoplanets, including the Earth-like KOI-456.04.
Back in 2010, astronomers discovered two massive exoplanets Kepler-160b and c orbiting very close to the star (Kepler-160). Kepler-160 b is a super Earth with a mass of 2.99 Earths and it orbits every 4.3 days its star at a distance of 0.05 AU. On the other hand, Kepler-160c is a Neptune-like exoplanet with a mass of 12.7 Earths and it takes 13.7 days to complete one orbit, sitting at 0.109 AU away from its star. The founding was announced in 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment