Kepler-10b is ‘planetary missing link’
NASA has announced it’s nailed the first “bone-fide” [sic] rocky exoplanet, which at 1.4 times the diameter of Earth is the smallest such body spotted to date outside our solar system.
As its name suggests, Kepler-10b was identified orbiting star Kepler-10 – at a distance of 560 light years from Earth – by the agency’s habitable planet-seeking Kepler mission.
Between May 2009 and January 2010, the spacecraft identified a list of stars as potential hosts of small planets. Its photometer clocked the miniscule drops in light as a body transited Kepler-10, enabling atronomers to calculate the potential planet’s size, orbital period and distance from the star.
Further work by the WM Keck Observatory 10-meter telescope in Hawaii, specifically measuring “tiny changes in the star’s spectrum, called Doppler shifts, caused by the telltale tug exerted by the orbiting planet on the star”, allowed scientists to announce a confirmed find.
Kepler-10b orbits every 0.84 days, has a mass 4.6 times that of Earth, and a density of 8.8 grams per cubic centimeter, or “similar to that of an iron dumbbell”, as NASA nicely puts it.
grams per cubic centimeter, or “similar to that of an iron dumbbell”, as NASA nicely puts it. (more…)