Kepler Mission Reveals an Alien Planet Size of Earth's Moon

 

 

          

 

An international team of astronomers has used nearly three years of high precision data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft to make the first observations of a planet outside our solar system that's about the size of the Earth's moon. It is one of three planets orbiting a star designated Kepler-37 in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the Milky Way. The three planets orbiting Kepler-37 are smaller than the Earth while the third is twice Earth's size. Kepler-37b is about 80% the size of Mercury and is the first exoplanet to be found that is smaller than any planet in our own Solar System. Astronomers with the Kepler team are looking for earth-like planets that might be able to support life.

"That's basically listening to the star by measuring sound waves," said Steve Kawaler, an Iowa State University professor of physics and astronomy, was part of a team of researchers who studied the oscillations of Kepler-37 to determine its size."The bigger the star, the lower the frequency, or 'pitch' of its song."

The team determined Kepler-37's mass is about 80 percent the mass of our sun. That's the lowest mass star astronomers have been able to measure using oscillation data for an ordinary star. Those measurements also allowed the main research team to more accurately measure the three planets orbiting Kepler-37, including the tiny Kepler-37b.

"Owing to its extremely small size, similar to that of the Earth's moon, and highly irradiated surface, Kepler-37b is very likely a rocky planet with no atmosphere or water, similar to Mercury," the astronomers wrote in a summary of their findings. "The detection of such a small planet shows for the first time that stellar systems host planets much smaller as well as much larger than anything we see in our own Solar System." Kawaler said the discovery is exciting because of what it says about the Kepler Mission's capabilities to discover new planetary systems around other stars.

Kepler launched March 6, 2009, from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft is orbiting the sun carrying a photometer, or light meter, to measure changes in the brightness of thousands of stars. Its primary job is to detect tiny variations in the brightness of the stars within its view to indicate planets passing in front of the star.

The Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation is also using data from that photometer to study stars. The investigation is led by a four-member steering committee: Kawaler, Chair Ron Gilliland of the Space Telescope Science Institute based in Baltimore, Jorgen Christensen-Dalsgaard and Hans Kjeldsen, both of Aarhus University in Denmark.

Kawaler said Kepler is sending astronomers photometry data that's "probably the best we'll see in our lifetimes." This latest discovery shows astronomers "we have a proven technology for finding small planets around other stars." That could have implications for some big-picture discoveries: "While a sample of only one planet is too small to use for determination of occurrence rates," the astronomers write in the Nature paper, "it does lend weight to the belief that planet occurrence increases exponentially with decreasing planet size."

The findings are published were published online on Feb. 20 by the journal Nature. The lead authors are Thomas Barclay of the NASA Ames Research Center in California and the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute and Jason Rowe of NASA Ames and the SETI Institute in California.

For more information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11914 Journal reference: Nature

 

          

 

The Daily Galaxy via Iowa State University and Nature

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Comments

[notsmartypants]

The three planets orbiting Kepler-37 are smaller than the Earth while the third is twice Earth's size.

Im guessing you meant 2 of the 3 are smaller?

[Daniel]

Just don't call them " Earth like ". That term has been tossed around too much - " Earth - like ", " Super - Earth ", etc.

[por-stair]

the three planets orbiting Kepler 37 called Kepler b-c and d all orbit about 1/10 the distance of Earth to the Sun. they are hot planets since Kepler 37 is about as hot as the Sun. Kepler d is 2 1/2 the size of Earth.