Kepler-453b is the 10th Known Circumbinary Planet
Posted on August 11, 2015
Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler Mission have discovered a new planet orbiting two stars. Kelper-453b is the 10th known circumbinary planet. It is located within the habitable zone of its host stars. The planet is on the right with the eclipsing binary stars on the left in the above artist's impression.
The astronomers were able to calculate that the planet has a radius of 6.2 times that of Earth based on the fact that Kepler-453b blocked 0.5 percent of its host stars' light during the transit. The astronomers say the large size indicates it is a gas giant and not a rocky planet so it would not sustain life as we know it. Any inhabitants of the system would see two suns in their sky like the view from the planet Tatooine in Star Wars. The stars orbit each other every 27 days. One of the stars is about the same as our sun and the second is only 20% the size of our sun. Kepler-453b takes 240 days to orbit its two host stars.
Stephen Kane, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University and member of the research team says in a statement, "If we had observed this planet earlier or later than we did, we would have seen nothing and assumed there was no planet there. That suggests that there are a lot more of these kinds of planets than we are thinking, and we're just looking at the wrong time."
A research paper on Kepler 453-b can be found here in the Astrophysical Journal.
- Fossil of Giant Freshwater Turtle Discovered
- Hubble Observes Stormy Weather on Jupiter
- Australian Spider Named After Marvel's Venom
- NASA's JWST Captures New Views of NGC 604
- Ancient Giant Sea Lizard Had Dagger-Like Teeth